


Karma

by ghuune



Category: Cowboy Bebop
Genre: Adventure, Angst, Bounty Hunting, Canon Divergent, Continuation, Drug Abuse, F/M, Fluff, Heavy Drinking, Slow Burn
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2016-05-04
Updated: 2016-05-04
Packaged: 2018-06-06 07:28:03
Rating: Mature
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 30
Words: 34,852
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/6745030
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ghuune/pseuds/ghuune
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>I know writing stories where Spike survives is considered dirty pool, but this is just an experiment. "Karma" is a series of vignettes exploring the relationships between Spike, Faye, and Jet now that they're alone on the Bebop. I'm writing this for my own joy and mean no disrespect to anyone else's interpretation of the series.</p><p>These vignettes are mostly written in present tense, for reasons which I hope will become clear as you work your way through them. A lot of people get annoyed by present tense, so if you're one of them, you might want to avoid reading this.</p><p>Originally posted on FF.net in 2006.</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

"Karma, Part I" 

Disclaimer For The Whole Damn Thing: One day, some men with horns in dark red suits knocked on my door and handed me a folder fat with legal documents. "If you sign here, miss, you'll own Cowboy Bebop and all of its characters," one said. He handed me a pen with a sinister, sharp nib. And I stabbed him in the eye with it, because I don't make deals with Satan. So I don't own Cowboy Bebop or any of its characters, and I never will.

KARMA: Part I

Spike has his back to her as he runs through his kata for the first time in two months, but he hears the angry clatter as Faye throws down the padd containing the information on her mining speculation on Io. Bad news. As always. She never receives any other kind.

She shrieks in frustration, something about the work ethic of chain gang labor. He grins, turns around, has to ask. "Why do you even try, Faye? You've lost enough gambling to pay off your debt five times over by now. Face it, your star's unlucky."

She lights a cigarette and leans back against the mustard-colored couch cushions, closing her eyes. "I do face it. My luck sucks. Anyway, it's not about winning enough to pay off my debt."

"Then what is it about?" He spin-kicks. Christ, that pulls the stitches. He controls his wince.

Eyes still closed, Faye says, "I'll see that question and raise you another. What's the quickest way to make sex pointless as hell?"

Still at full extension, he says with a grin, "You'd know better than I would."

"Well, excuse me!" Faye slams her feet on the floor, sits bolt upright. "That wasn't an invitation for you to make crude conjectures on my past. I'm just saying, you used to be in a crime syndicate, so for God's sakes—"

"Quit squalling. You walked right into that one, so you have no one to blame but yourself. What's your point?"

"My point is, the quickest way is prostitution. All kinds of sex with no meaning behind it. Okay? So what's the monetary equivalent?"

Spike gets it. Faye leans back, smiling again, and spreads her hands wide in a "See?" gesture.

She takes a deep drag off her cigarette. "Every time I thought about my debt, it just froze me up. It was too big to think about but also too big to get over, you know? So one day, I walk into a casino. All that money flowing around me. People winning fortunes and then blowing it all away. And I think, there's the answer. So you see, I don't gamble to win. I gamble to lose." She pauses. "Just like my life."

"So by your logic, I'm trying to devalue the pain of having my ass handed to me."

This gives Faye pause. For a moment she looks almost female as a deep-six sadness crosses her face. But then she smirks and quickly brings the conversation back to zero.

"There's a name for people like you. 'SAM'—Smart. Ass. Masochist. You've just never learned to channel it properly, that's all."

"Like you know all about it, Faye," he says.

Her smirk widens. She narrows her eyes knowingly.

"Do you?" He breaks his stance and turns to face her.

"Well, this is a change from your usual line of interrogation," she says. "Let's see, I made it with a pre-op transsexual once. That was interesting."

"You mean Gren? Yeah, I remember that. You mooned all over the ship for weeks. A real bore."

"Yeah, whatever. I don't exist for your pleasure, you know."

"Sure, then whose?"

"Mine."

"Like Gren was any good for that. That femme?" Spike snorts inelegantly and resumes his kata.

Faye waggles a hand in the air: comme ci, comme ca, leaving loops of blue smoke behind. "He had his good points and his bad points. They all do. It felt good at the time; it was what I needed, anyway."

Spike throws a couple of quick punches. "What you needed."

"Then," she says.

"He loved Julia," Spike says, almost to himself. "She was on Callisto. They knew each other."

"What is it about that woman?" Faye nearly screams. She jams the butt of her cigarette into the ash tray, sending sparks flying. "I'm always picking up her seconds!"

"Take it as a compliment," Spike says. He grins, shrugs. "If a man who was attracted to Julia could be attracted to you—"

This is a wrong thing to say. Spike realizes it just before Faye wings the ash tray at him and ducks in time. The ash tray sails over his head, trailing butts.

"Shit, Faye, what the hell you trying to do?" he says, rubbing his eyes. Some of those ashes hit their mark. But Faye isn't there. A door slams open and shut. In the distance, an engine chugs to life.

"Oh, come on," he calls after her.

The Redtail buzzes out of the hangar. She got into that habit before he left to face Vicious, and now, she scoots off whenever something doesn't go her way. Just like a cat. Or a real woman. Drives Jet nuts.


	2. Adrift Over the Rings of Saturn

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> "Adrift Over the Rings of Saturn" A/N: There's some canon-bending with regards to Faye's reactions to Julia. I honestly believe that Faye was frightened by Julia (because who wouldn't be?), but teaming up with her was an option, so she couldn't have been as terrified as I made her out to be. Keep in mind though that Faye is reflecting on her time with Julia a couple of months after the end of the series, when the damage the cow did is more blatant. (Oh, all RIGHT, fine, I'll try to be fair to Julia... sheesh).
> 
> William Gibson's coined the term "street samurai," along with "cyberspace," in his book "Neuromancer." All honor to him for that one, not me. It's too good not to use here, though, but remember, every time you see it, it's not mine, it's Gibson's.

Just what had he planned to do with Julia, anyway? Faye fumes, gunning the Redtail into a fuel-wasting tailspin over Saturn's ice rings. Shards of ice refract the light from Sol, splashing it across her cockpit bubble like meltwater.

Julia was a killer. Permafrosted, an emotionless gunbitch. Street samurai. Assassin. A drop of sweat drifts free from Faye's forehead to float in front of her eyes.

She'd been terrified the whole time she was in Julia's company. Terrified that the woman would smell Faye's love for her man and turn her guns on her; that she would ask Faye questions she didn't want, couldn't answer; that she would use Faye as a way to Spike. And a deeper terror. Sitting next to Julia had been like—

—like being around Spike in his worst moods, when he can kill you by accident in a single blind moment. Oh sure, he'll feel bad about it when he comes around, but that won't help you, dead on the floor with a broken neck or a bullet in the brain—

—like sitting next to Vicious, breathing his self-hatred and loneliness and pain and knowing none of it really touched him, he exhaled it all like poison—

No. The real terror of being near Julia was the awareness that she alone possessed the ability to restore Spike to what he used to be. A warrior, a wanderer flowing with the blood of the beast, just like her. And together they would flee, the two beautiful, hunted, dangerous animals, to die a swift and ugly death on some distant hunk of rock.

Because no matter how Faye flips it in her mind, she can't see how the Julia she'd met and the Spike she knows could have ever lived the life of Joe and Gina Normal. Julia was a killer, and her mate was the killer in Spike—not the goofy, clumsy, idiot-genius charm boy Spike can often be.

Which is the Spike Faye wants. Not the one who busts heads with his boot heel. Though she'll take that one too as part of the bargain.

But she's beginning to wrap her head around the concept that she isn't going to have any part of Spike, ever, and she isn't going to have a family, and she isn't going to have a home. The Redtail is her only possession, and a stolen one at that.

She's a thief, as much a thief as Spike is a murderer—it's in her, and if she focuses it, maybe she can pull off miracles. She doesn't want to, is all. She doesn't want to live her life stealing everything she calls her own—and nothing she wants is going to be given to her. She learned that lesson when she lay down in the stick-figure bed she'd drawn in the ruins of her family's home.

So if she can't steal it and it won't be a gift, she has to earn it. Faye, adrift now over the ice rings of Saturn, knows she hasn't earned one thing she has in this do-over life of hers.


	3. Alchemy, Parts 1 and 2

"Alchemy, Parts One and Two" A/N: My apologies for sticking an Earth song that will probably be long lost to the universe past the 21st century in here, but it's an in-joke with myself and I couldn't resist.

KARMA: Alchemy, Part I

Spike makes dinner.

He's not a good cook, but he knows how to make edible food out of inedible not-food, so he does that. Basically, you put things in hot grease until it sizzles and tans, and then you eat it.

"Where's Faye?" Jet asks.

"Off somewhere being a pain in the ass to herself and everyone around her," Spike mutters, breaking an egg over the skillet. He relents when he catches Jet's expression. "She's just run off again. Hey, do we own a spatula?"

"She could be anywhere," Jet says. He intercepts the broken eggshell Spike throws over his shoulder and flicks it sharply into a wastebasket. Spike sees this out of the corner of his right eye and grins.

"Well, she's got no money, no gas, and no place to go, so give her a few hours to cool off and she'll be back. She's like that cat in that song."

"Cat? Song? For a man who hates cats, you sure got a lot a lore stored up about 'em." Jet hands him a bent and rusted spatula that looks like it'd been used as a hammer at some point in the past. Spike shrugs and uses the flatter side to flip the egg. The yolk breaks, running into the hot grease, turning opaque. Jet sighs and bites. "Okay, what song?"

"You know." Spike inflicts Jet with his singing voice, tuneless at best, a flat roar at worst. "'The cat came back, he didn't want to roam, the very next day it was home sweet home.' Something about this cat nobody wants and they keep dumping it places and it keeps turning up 'til finally they just get over it and keep the damn thing."

Spike scrapes the fried egg onto the spatula and realizes he forgot to grab a plate. As he turns around to find one, the egg begins to slide, trembling gelatinous white headed down. Jet shoves a plate under it before the last egg on the Bebop becomes a tiny slimy floor mat.

"I'd'a just shot the varmint, but Earth people were real sentimental before their moon blew up," Spike says, eating the egg directly off the plate. It's still hot from the grease. He sucks in air to cool his burning tongue.

"What did you do to piss her off this time? Dammit, Spike, I keep telling you not to needle that wench. Every time she pulls a dash I gotta check the whole damn Bebop to make sure she didn't screw us again." Jet surveys what Spike has done to his kitchen and frowns. "Get the hell out of here while I clean this up and make us something to eat, wouldja please?"

"I didn't do anything," Spike says, re: both Faye and the kitchen. "That twitch gets annoyed you so much as tell her it's Wednesday." He puts the plate on the counter nowhere near the sink. "'Sides, she didn't pull anything this time. She bailed quicker than usual."

Jet moves the plate to the sink with the patience of a man who does this too often to fight over it, the metal of his cybernetic arm clicking against the metal of the plate. "And you're supposed to be in bed," he grouses.

"Yeah, yeah," Spike says, lighting a cigarette as he wanders off.

KARMA: Alchemy, Part II

The hangar smells of old cooking when Faye brings the Redtail, sputtering on the last of its fuel rods, back in. It's too late to expect any for herself and with Spike mobile, there's no way there'd be leftovers, but Faye creeps into the darkened kitchen to forage.

"So where'd you go this time? Blow the money from the safe playing pachinko slots on Ganymede?"

Faye startles at Jet's rough voice. Fire flares as he lights a cigarette. The glow gilds the metal fingers of his cybernetic hand and sparks in one gray eye.

"I didn't take anything from the safe and you know I don't have any woolongs for a Gate jump. I just drifted on the ice rings for awhile and then came back. Don't worry so much." She opens the little fridge and takes out a can of—she looks at the label in the cold light—baked beans? Oh well. She pops the top and tips the can into her mouth.

"Your charge was up and about," he says.

"What, the hairball? Yeah, sure, I know that," she says, licking the can clean as she kicks the fridge door shut.

"I figured if anyone could keep him in bed, it'd be you." Jet's voice is bland as baby food.

Faye slams the can onto the counter. "And what exactly is that supposed to mean?"

"Nothin'. Generally speaking, the guy goes out of his way to keep from tangling with you. Figured he'd possum up until you got bored baby-sitting him and found something else to do."

"You know damn well that Spike actually goes out of his way to tangle with me," Faye says. "Or at least he acts like it." She leans against the counter and accepts Jet's lighter for her own cigarette. The only illumination in the kitchen is their small, burning coals.

"He oughta thank you."

"What for? We played card games 'til even I was bored out of my mind." This darkness is good but also dangerous. Faye senses that both she and Jet find the dark freeing: that things can be said here, with their faces hidden from each other, that ought not be said at all. She should walk away, but she's curious, and her curiosity has always trumped her better sense.

"You sat with him for two months straight, just like you always sit with him when he drags his busted ass back in here to be fixed up."

"And when he wakes up, I usually sock him with a pillow. Not exactly the act of a Florence Nightingale."

"A what?"

Faye doesn't explain. She gets bored, sometimes, sharing her old-world knowledge with people who really ought to be wheeling her wizened body around in a chair by now. Besides, Jet has her story second-hand, probably from Spike or from whatever he's pieced together himself, and the last thing she wants to do is run through it all again.

"Whatever. Why do you do it, Faye?" Jet asks.

"Who proclaimed today 'Ask Faye Dumb Questions' day?" Faye stomps one foot, the sound echoing through the silent, sleeping ship. "How in the hell should I know why I do it? I just do, that's all."

"Keep your voice down," Jet says automatically. They'd gotten into the habit over the last two months of behaving as though they were in a hospital—especially that one nightmarish week when Spike had tossed in fever dreams, screaming the names of his dead. Jet had been two steps away from having the ship shriven for ghosts after that, Faye remembers.

"Right," she whispers.

"Look, all I'm sayin' is, if he's ever said anything nice to or about you, I wasn't there for it. Watch yourself, Faye," Jet says. The coal of his cigarette bobs and rises a few feet in the air as Jet stands.

"You're both neck and neck in the pissing-me-off race," she says, annoyed by his concern, as she usually is. "I always watch myself. And for your information, the only person on this ship who ever made a habit of sucking up to me is on Earth getting beaned by moon meteors."

"Ed can take care of herself. Get some rest. I'm getting you up early tomorrow. Big bounties to catch, a universe of riches." Jet's voice fades in the distance, riding the tang of his smoke back to her.


	4. No Shades of Gray

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Cross-posting this is a Greek flatbread. I'm just copypasta from here in. Sorry for my overly chatty A/Ns: it's an artifact of FF culture ten years ago.

"No Shades of Gray" A/N: I'm basing Spike's past on his advice to Azimov in "Asteroid Blues," but also on a flashback shot in "Ballad of Fallen Angels," which shows a vase of roses, a puddle of Red Eye, a vial of Red Eye, and a hypospray on a table. Also, there's a flashback shot that shows Spike in a gunfight, and from his POV the screen has the same grainy, jumpy look as it did during Azimov's POV in "Asteroid Blues."

In later episodes, it's repeatedly shown that the Red Dragons deal heavily in Red Eye. I'm assuming they buy so much of it for internal use, though they could be schlepping it off to other buyers for a profit. From "Asteroid Blues," the high off Red Eye appears to be unfun in the extreme (I get seasick just watching it), so I figure no one would put themselves through that except people who neeed to kill other people to stay alive, AKA assassins, gunmen, and murderers—and Spike seems to have experience with the come-down.

KARMA: No Shades of Gray

She's gone before he wakes, though he thinks he hears her zipcraft flying from the hangar as he stirs.

Spike reaches for a cigarette, wincing from the pull of the stitches holding his insides together, and lights it. After he smokes half of it, he feels prepared to rise. He ignores the twinges from various muscles sore from yesterday's workout as he gets out of bed.

Getting dressed is an adventure in biomechanics, as it always is when he's injured. How to pull this on, step into that, zip this and buckle that, all while babying this joint or that muscle or that long-ass tear that doesn't want to move? Answer: you either don't get dressed or you don't baby the poor busted muscles. Today Spike goes with B, but there were days in the past, especially before the Bebop became wall-to-wall curious females, when he went with A.

He shakes his head and almost laughs, remembering Ed's horrifying tendency to stick her head into doors at the worst possible moments. Not an ounce of sexual feeling in the critter—at least he hoped to God not, the stuff of nightmares right there—but she was a feral girl-child without shame.

Jet's whistling in the kitchen, which means Faye's either in one of her rare good moods or buzzed off somewhere. "Where's the woman?" Spike asks, yawning as he enters. Then he catches the complex scent of good coffee, the kind that needs to be perked in a machine with a basket and grounds and everything, and freezes. "What, she pipe a millionaire or something?"

"Faye's out on a bounty right now," Jet says.

"Why didn't you wake me?" he asks, shooting a glare at his partner. The mugs are kept in an upper cabinet and as he reaches to open the door he gasps and flinches. Something inside still isn't right. Spike suspects this not-rightness is going to be with him for awhile, if not forever.

Jet sees it. "That's why," he says. "Grab a cup of coffee, buddy, and siddown."

"You're backing her up, right?"

Jet scowls and brandishes a communicator. "What do you think I am?"

"Someone who thinks he can rely on Faye," Spike says glumly, but he pours his coffee without spilling too much of it and lounges across from Jet with his feet on the table. "Tell me about it."

"Not much to tell. Smuggler sending wenches up the river. Big bounty. Big enough to break out the Colombian."

"A prostitution ring?" Spike laughs, takes a swig of coffee, and laughs again, almost choking on the mouthful. "So you've got Faye tramped up even more than usual, swishing her tail somewhere."

"Not that kind of wench," Jet says. His good humor dims a bit. "This guy's scum. Little kids."

"Aw, shit." He'd seen too much of that when he was in the Red Dragons. It was one of the reasons he'd wanted out so goddamn bad. Well, that, Julia, Vicious, and the fact that being a junkie had gotten seriously old. "You think she can hack it?"

"She was pretty bent, but I managed to get it through her thick skull that if she does her job right for once, she can break up the whole ring. Still, there's a pretty good chance she'll just shoot the guy in the ballsack." Jet takes a sip of coffee. "And if she does, I won't blame her."

Spike grimaces. "I'm pissed about missing this one," he says. "You know, it's so rare to get a bounty head where you don't feel the least bit bad about ruining his whole day. Fuck." He lights a new cigarette off the butt of his old one. "And that kinda thing, they got guards crawling over guards keeping the cargo under control and the fuzz out of the picture. Faye's not long on finesse."

For a moment, they sit with their coffee and their lit cigarettes, Jet's communicator between them like a small, ugly centerpiece.

Then Spike's feet thump to the floor. He swallows the rest of his coffee in two long gulps and puts the mug down. His movements are measured but emphatic, and the metal mug clicks sharply on the table.

Jet sighs resignedly. "You're going?"

"Yeah. I can't just sit around." He slouches, sticking his hands in his pockets. "Where'd you put my gear, Jet?"


	5. Auction of Lost Children

"Auction of Lost Children" A/N: Pure invention. No explanations required. Title half-ganked from a very good French sci-fi movie, "City of Lost Children."

KARMA: Auction of Lost Children

She's taken out prostitution rings with Jet and Spike before. A little undercover work, a push-up bra and more makeup than a drag queen, it's easy money. Faye isn't above elbow-chucking the gropers and she's used to being undressed by men's stares, so though it's annoying and demeaning, she can deal with being treated like a hooker long enough to slap cuffs on some fuckwad pimp. And none of them ever suspected that the new talent with the long waist and large chest was actually a bounty hunter. Men can be so blind when they want to be.

She is who she is, Jet and Spike's jibes aside, not a hooker, just ramblin', gamblin' Faye. She got the chance to make that call for herself. These children haven't.

Faye grits her teeth as she watches the auction. Somewhere in the crowd, the bastard responsible for tearing these kids away from their lives is waiting for his just desserts. Some of the kids cry softly, hysteria kept at bay with drugs. Some look almost goofily confused. Some have their heads up, eyes hard, little street-toughs. She sees Ed and Spike in those faces, lost children without caretakers, without homes.

Faye doesn't know where these kids were snatched from or what their stories are, but she knows, with the solar system being the big, cold place it can be sometimes, that this is a trade-up for a couple of them. Which just makes it all the sadder.

Her communicator hisses at her hip, and Faye fades out of the crowd into an alley.

"Yeah, Jet, what's up? I haven't ID'd our guy yet, but he's definitely still in business."

"It's not Jet. Where are you?"

"Spike, you're not in this," she says, but she's glad to hear his voice at first. There's big muscle here, bigger than she can take out even with a couple of guns and her fair-to-middlin' hand-to-hand skills.

She frowns. Spike's not the winning hand, she reminds herself. He folds. If the big nasty breaks out, it's on her to protect them both. Best to keep him out of it entirely. "I've got it under control. Go home."

"No deal. Tell me."

He has that tone in his voice, the hard tone that brooks no argument. Faye gives up. "Old City, Baines West. The auction's the main event, you can't miss it."

"Auction?"

"Yeah. Job brings his cargo and sells it off to the highest bidder. Apparently brothels come from all over the solar system to bid." Faye can't keep her disgust out of her voice. "He hasn't shown his snout yet."

Spike's voice growls over the communicator. "All right. Don't do anything stupid. I'll be right there."

Faye cuts the communication without saying goodbye. What the hell does he think she's going to do? She knows she can't do anything for those kids already up on the block, but if she plays her hand right, she can keep any more from going up there in their place.

According to Jet, Job's the main wheel in child prostitution, having ruthlessly undersold and murdered all the competition; take him out, and the solar system suddenly becomes a little bit safer for the tinker toy set. It's one of those bounties where the bounty hunters get to be heroes, and she's not poised to fuck it up.

So get off my back, hairball, she thinks, and sticks her tongue out at the communicator.

She rejoins the crowd, not wanting to miss her chance to ID Job. She can't take him down here, but the plan is to follow him until he's a little separated from the main event, take out his bodyguards somehow, and slap cuffs on him. Also according to Jet, Job isn't much for wet work himself; he hires street samurai to protect him. There'll be some nasty.

With Spike in play, Faye's biggest concern is how to keep the necessary nasty from escalating. All he needs is someone's boot in his gut and it's disc-skip back two months and instant replay.

She senses him before she sees him, invisible fishing wire in her vertebrae connected to his sternum: she feels his movements in her spine.

He slouches through the crowd, moving slowly, drifting almost aimlessly to her. Nothing appears to be paining him, but Faye figures he's got something he's holding in.

"Yo," he says. "You two nurses had a good try cutting me out of this one."

"All I care about is my share of the take," Faye says lightly. The auctioneer's babble covers their soft conversation. "You can do whatever the hell you like."

"And planets continue to be round," Spike says, bored.

Faye frowns. She and Jet have been living on lean woolongs, pumping money into Spike's considerable medical bills. All the more reason to keep his skinny ass off the floor this time.

"This guy. The visual. Is it gonna be accurate?"

"Our boy's got a phobia about biosurgery," Faye whispers back. "You can tell by how astonishingly fucking ugly he is." She fills Spike in on the plan, eyeballing him to see if he'll follow it; if he won't, there's not much she can do but damage control.

He watches the stage, the little kids, and his eyes narrow, but he doesn't tense. Faye exhales slowly. Good, that's the hard part over.

"Guy. There," he says, bending down so the word is just a breath in her ear. "I'm going. Follow." And he's gone.

Faye does, trying for the same aimless, drifting motion he uses. For once, her looks aren't a problem; she's attracting attention, but the oglers take her for a working gal and their eyes slide right over her as part of the scene. Spike somehow manages to look like some brothel owner's bored bodyguard, glancing around for his master without much interest.

She still doesn't have a visual of Job, but Spike must see something from his superior height. All she sees is shoulderblades and scalps.

The crowd thickens as they draw close to the stage, and the auctioneer's jeering babble pounds in her ears. Faye winces, feeling the birth of a headache in her temples.

A flicker of movement. Spike slides to the side, and Faye gets a glance of Job clambering into a souped-up cross between a limosine and an armored tank. Then children exiting the stage in leg irons obstruct her view.

"He's on the move."

"What now?" Faye asks.

"I tagged the car, tracker," Spike says, turning his palm towards her just enough for her to glimpse the tiny dart gun he had up his coat sleeve. "Wait. See where he ends up. Hopefully in a bar somewhere. I could use a drink." He spins and walks back through the crowd, leaving Faye staring after him.


	6. Cocktail

"Cocktail" A/N: Mother disclaimer: All drugs are bad. Shirley Temples and whiskey sours exist, but if you're under 21 (or whatever your country's drinking age is), wait to enjoy until you are.

KARMA: Cocktail

It's not so much a bar as an orgy with alcohol, and Faye pulls on a pair of gloves before she touches anything. The place reeks of raw liquor and raw sex, and Spike walks on nails, pricked by fundamental needs.

He orders a double whiskey sour, emphasis on the sour.

"Takin' your life in your hands," Faye sing-songs as she swishes past him. She's casing the place for Job or any of his steroid-bulked associates and she's obvious about it, craning her neck this way and that to look over the writhing bodies of revelers.

Spike grabs her upper arm. "He's in the back, and if the scene out here's too much for you, you don't want to follow him."

Faye twists her arm out of his grip, glaring at him. He opens his hand and swallows half his drink. "Have it your way, but the way you look, you just might get an education."

"One of these days I'm going to buy a habit just to shut you up."

"It'd be an improvement," he says, draining the sugar-lemon-Jack sludge left at the bottom of the glass. The ice cubes clink against each other. He taps the rim of the glass and the half-dressed bartender winks at him and takes it away to mix another.

She sits beside him, putting her chin on her fists. The plasticine covering of the barstool creaks unappetizingly as her weight settles.

"What's your pleasure?" he asks.

"You wanna buy me a drink?" Faye scowls. "Then you order me something."

Spike grins to himself. He'd bet his last woolong she doesn't know thing one about mixed drinks. Every time Faye decides to get hammered, it's straight liquor or beer, unless someone hands her a martini. "Sweet? Sour? Straight?"

"Common question round here," the bartender says, on her way to the other end of the bar to serve another customer.

Faye is suddenly delighted, her eyes brightening. She throws her head back and laughs. Spike laughs too, surprising himself. Must be feeling it already, he thinks.

The bartender brings a fresh whiskey sour, and Faye taps his hand. "Let me try that."

"You won't like it," he says, but scoots the glass towards her.

She takes a sip and screws up her face. "Eugh. It's like lemonade with no sugar."

"Oh, there's sugar in it, but not much," Spike says. "Told you you wouldn't like it." He signals the bartender. "Get her a..." What drink would annoy her the most? "A Shirley Temple."

When the pink cocktail arrives, a fishbowl bristling with cherry stems, Faye glares and growls.

Spike grins and finishes his second double whiskey sour. It goes straight to his head, and he baits her. "Can you tie the cherry stem into a knot? All the girls who drink those can tie the stems into knots."

Faye savagely plucks a long-stemmed cherry out of the drink, crushes the fruit between her fingers, and knots the stem with her hands, scowling at him the whole time.

"Not what I meant," Spike says, on the verge of laughing again. Faye sucks the pulped cherry fruit off her fingertips.

He watches her do that with some interest, but over her shoulder is Job's ugly face. The child smuggler is doing up his pants. Two goons hover just behind his shoulders like strange wings.

"Our boy," he says, nodding towards him.

"We do it here or tail him outside?"

Spike glances around. "Hell, let's do it here. That way we won't have to pay the tab."

"Good plan," Faye says. They both rise and pull their pistols.

Spike fires first, taking out the bodyguard on the left. Faye hesitates. What is she doing? As the screaming starts, she finally shoots, but so does her target. She misses. He doesn't. She gasps and slumps against the bar, holding her side.

Job's on the move, heading out the back.

"Shit!" The other bodyguard vaults the bar and reaches to pull Spike over, but he pistol-whips him and shoots him point-blank. Gray matter spatters the liquor bottles.

Faye's injured but alive, and Job is getting away, along with the seven point eight million woolong bounty on his head. Spike takes off after the mark.

"Jet, Faye's down," he shouts into his communicator as he runs. "Looks like she forgot how to aim."

"Keep your cool," Jet says. "Just take care of Job. I'll pick up Faye."

"Don't sound so eager," Spike mutters, cutting off the communication.

Job doesn't have an escape route planned. Like a lot of big wheels, he's gotten sloppy, complacent. Spike catches up to him at the end of the hall in a dead-end, but as he tackles him, he feels the sharp sting of a hypodermic needle in his thigh. Job smiles manically up at him as he presses the plunger, slamming the chemical home.

"Lame," Spike says, punching him in the gut. "That your last resort or just something of your own?" He rips the needle out of his thigh and throws it away, but the drug is already in his veins. Euphoria, golden high. Spike clenches his teeth, hating it, hating the tingling little massaging fingers under his skin. The drug does one good thing: it masks the pain in his belly, and, maddened, Spike doesn't hold back.

He drags Job to his feet, slams him against the wall. The smuggler's teeth click together. Bloody froth appears on his lips. Spike hauls him around, bends him double. He brings his knee up and his elbow down, crushing the smuggler's balls and knocking him unconscious.

Job must have called for reinforcements. They'll be busting in any second now, but Spike's deep underwater, warm water. He slumps against the wall, his arms and legs heavy, dragging. The narcotic makes him feel a little sick now, but the nausea is far away and hard to fix on. Spike fumbles for the communicator as he slides to the floor.

"Jet..." he slurs, "I'm flying, man. I'm in the back..."


	7. The Prince of Vices

"The Prince of Vices" A/N: Again with the Mother disclaimer. And I really thought Stoned!Spike would be a little funnier, but such is not the case... maybe I just can't write funny. That's probably it.

FAQ about pupils: I figure the cybernetic pupil wouldn't respond to biological impulses like being drugged up or aroused, because it wouldn't need to. That kind of thing is an evolutionary response, a means of communication, which is so utterly what Spike's right eye is not about. This isn't borne out in canon, but what the hell, it's nifty to write it in.

KARMA: The Prince of Vices

Aw, look at this mess.

Brains on the bar bottles, abandoned clothes everywhere, Faye slumped in a pool of congealing blood.

Someone sings in the distance.

"Spike," Jet groans. Only one person can sing that badly: Spike when he's three sails to the wind.

A wild-eyed man limps out of the back hall, looking over his shoulder, and collides with Jet's solid mass. He goggles upwards. His nose cants sharply to the right and blood pours down his chin.

"You must have bugged him," Jet says. He wraps his cybernetic arm around Job's neck and squeezes until the man stops struggling. Then he cuffs him to the bar runner and he's finally free to check Faye.

Her pulse is weak and her lips are pale. The wound is ugly, but all bullet wounds are—a dark little hole drooling blood onto the floor. Jet decides he can't waste time worrying about whether he'd have company. The Hammerhead is blocking the main entrance and since Job came running that way, there's probably no back door. The cavalry will have to find another way in.

The bullet passed clean through her side, going through muscle and skin, but it didn't hit bone, which means Jet doesn't have to worry about bone shards causing internal injuries. Faye's life isn't in immediate danger unless she dies of hydrostatic shock, but he sweats anyway. He bandages her and gives her a painkiller to keep her under. As he pulls her away from the bar, he sees the small hole in the siding... on a whim Jet pries the slug out of the faux bois and pockets it.

Footsteps, unsteady. Jet stands and turns. "Took you long enough," he says.

Spike grins lopsidedly. Sweat stands out in drops on his forehead and temples, drips off his nose and chin. He staggers, half-falls, half-jumps onto the bar and tips back his head, singing to the ceiling. If you want to call it singing, which Jet doesn't.

"Hey, there you are!" Spike says jovially, finally recognizing him. His pupils don't match up. His left eye is fully dilated, a large dark hole, while his right looks as sane and sober as ever. It gives Jet the willies.

"Think you can carry Job?" he asks, hooking a thumb at the unconscious smuggler.

"Cash and carry only. Fifty thousand woolongs, my man," Spike says, and laughs.

"Nevermind. Just get your ass on the Hammerhead, if you can find it," Jet growls. "How could you let yourself get drugged? Unbelievable." He gently lifts Faye, the sticky warmth of her blood on his arm a cause for alarm.

Spike swings his legs over the bar and grabs bottles of liquor. After he makes his selections, he knocks the rest off the rack, shattering them. The sudden, shocking smell of sugar and rye boils up, making Jet's eyes smart. He shakes his head as he walks out the door. It's amazing how Spike's brain works. High off his ass, he still finds a way to snitch booze and cover up for the theft at the same time.

Stinking of alcohol, Spike pops up at his elbow like some bizarre jack-in-the-box, a prince of vices, the bottles in his arms chiming against one another. With difficulty, Jet keys the Hammerhead open to put Faye in. Spike climbs in after, clambering to kneel by her head. "She's not dead, is she?"

He drops the bottles in his arms. Thankfully, none of them break, but unthankfully, some of them are the ones with the brains, and it's getting all over his cockpit.

Spike doesn't notice. He puts his hand on Faye's hair. "Jet. Jet, she's shot."

"Yeah, but it's no big deal, she's fine," he says, scowling. "Wait here and don't touch anything until I bring out Job. You got that?"

Spike shudders and stares at him. Even with his mismatched eyes and bloodstained clothing, he suddenly looks like nothing more than a little kid, his eyes huge and brilliant with the effects of the drug. "I don't feel good," he says.

"I bet, bud," Jet says, closing the door.


	8. Distant Little Spark

"Distant Little Spark" A/N: I've always thought it odd that Faye never gets injured, with the risks she takes and the life she leads, but I guess the animators didn't want to draw scars on her. This was a hard section to write because I wanted to avoid using Faye's injury for pity. Like Spike and Jet, she gets shot, and nobody cares much. Fact of life on the Bebop. And yes, I am going to put her in a different outfit from here on in. I loathe that thing she always wears. The woman needs some dignity.

KARMA: Distant Little Spark

Light. Round, dirty, translucent plastic shield. Set in a dented and be-webbed bulkhead.

Familiar odors: stale cigarette smoke, spilled beer, cold coffee, dust, sweat, a whiff of wet dog. Scratchiness of rough old fabric. Lumps pressing against her lower back.

Something makes a repetitive, hollow tap-tap-tap-tap sound, senseless and irritable as a snake's rattle.

Her voice is rough with sleep. "Strange Afterlife. Now I know how you must feel when you wake up here."

"Don't flatter yourself." Spike's voice, somewhere behind and above her. The tapping comes from the same place. "It's a flesh wound with delusions of grandeur. Lucky the guy was such a suck shot. If you'd've kept your act together, you could have helped me out with Job."

"Well, forgive me for not ever having been shot before. I'm not used to it," Faye says. She struggles to sit up and gasps. "Aaah, ow."

A bandage swaths her midsection. She presses it, experimentally, until she finds the bit that really hurts. Lower right-hand side, just beneath her ribs.

She twists to look at Spike, sitting on the stairs kicking his heel against a metal riser, and points an accusing finger at her side. "What are you talking about, a flesh wound? There's a lot of important stuff right here! I could be dying even as we speak!"

"You're not dying if you can make that much noise," Spike snaps, standing and stuffing his hands in his pockets.

Faye reaches for her cigarettes. "It feels weird," she says, contemplating the pain. Deep. Bad. Sort of nauseating, burning.

There's a hole in her. She has trouble wrapping her head around that concept—a little piece of metal bored right through her. Lighting a smoke, she asks, "What happened?"

Spike snorts. "You got your ass shot off. Bullet passed through. Jet found it in the wall if you want a souvenir." He tosses her a tiny, misshapen lump of metal. Faye juggles it for a second and then drops it with a sound of disgust. He snaps his fingers, jittering in place, more nervous than Faye's ever seen him.

"Only Jet would think of something so morbid," Faye says, inhaling. That hurt too, deep inside. She presses her hand against her flank as though to hold something in.

"Fine, then I'll keep it. A souvenir," he says, crossing the living room to pick up the bullet. "I'll pretend it was my shot. My prized possession." He tosses it up in the air and catches it, grinning.

His words and his smile are a slap in her face. She looks at the floor. "You son of a bitch," she says. "That's not funny. You may get off on getting shot, but it doesn't feel so great to me."

He stops jittering, as suddenly still as an electrical device unplugged from the socket. "I don't get off on it." His voice isn't mocking anymore, but she won't look at him.

Chair springs squeal as he sits. Silence, then a click as he puts the bullet on the coffee table. Faye glances up then and regards the slug, the way the overhead light plays over its distorted shape. That's been in me, she thinks.

No dice. She still can't do it, can't imagine that little thing as the cause of the pain in her flank. She fiddles with the ties of the bandage, considering unwrapping it to get a look at the wound. Even with the pain, it doesn't seem real, that she's been shot, that she's feeling what Spike and Jet have felt.

She looks at him. He's paler than usual, hair wild as though he's been running his hands through it, circles under his eyes. The marks of some strain. She knows better than to pretend it's because of her. Was he injured? His expression tells her nothing.

He exhales in a short burst. "Look, you know I didn't mean that. It just pissed me off, the way you hesitated. You should have opened fire the same time I did."

Faye checks an angry retort and says, "Fair enough. I did hesitate."

Her hand shakes as she brings the cigarette up for another drag. The long tube of gray ash on its end tumbles off to smear the mustard-colored couch. Because the last thing she wants is for Spike to get all curious about why she hesitated, she asks quickly, "Job? We get him?"

"Yeah. He's in the hold. We're taking him to Mars to turn him in."

"Anything else happen?" Slowly, grudging herself each word, she asks, "Were you hurt?"

"Got shot up with some fucking downer Job had on him, but other than that, no."

The rug is crusted with dirt, fibers sticking up every which-way like Spike's hair. The dust grains bounce light and she stares at the distant little sparks, hating herself for being so relieved.


	9. Dope Sick Boy

"Dope Sick Boy" A/N: Embroidering on my hypothesis that Spike used Red Eye, and extrapolating from there. (Also, if you want to get really far out, like Film 391 far out, the way Spike rejects the mushrooms at the end of "Mushroom Samba." Going from Ein's hiccup, some of those shrooms had a little power, and perhaps Spike shuns them for more reason than he's just sick of the taste. Yes, this is indeed a stretch).

The title's a variation on the Rancid song "Dope Sick Girl."

KARMA: Dope Sick Boy

He feels like shit.

Hangovers he can deal with, tell himself it's just a bad headache, a case of the flu. Or tell himself the truth, it's a goddamn hangover, sleep it off and the next day everything's all right. Make himself a Prairie Oyster and drink it with his nose pinched shut.

The come-down off whatever Job pumped into him makes him itchy, makes him want to go out and find more. He thinks: It's a chemical compulsion, nothing to do with anything. Sweat it out. He strips off his shirt and puts on his sweatpants and starts his kata, but the come-down makes every muscle hurt three times as bad. Makes him tense up, makes him slow and thick, his body resistant.

There's an easy fix—fuck off, he says to that inner voice.

There are times when, as much as he respects Mao, he wants to find the man's ghost in the Afterlife and kick the living shit out of it. This is one of them. When you're already addicted to one drug, it makes it a lot easier to get into other stuff, fun stuff, recreational stuff. Spike kicks, ignoring the agony of the stretching scar.

Red Eye's no fun. Spike had no trouble keeping his hands off it except to keep withdrawal at bay. It's the other junk that gets him in trouble. Got him in trouble. Past tense.

Once this drug's out of his system, he won't want any more of it. That's how it works, at least the physical side of it, provided he doesn't fuck up and take something until he needs it to function. The mental side is the real rodeo, the part where the bull can throw him to the sawdust and go for gore.

Charlie horse. Thigh. Spike falls to one knee and massages the knotted muscle. It's balled up like a fist, striking pain all up and down his leg.

"Goddammit," he snarls.

"You alright?" Jet pokes his head around the wall.

"Yeah, peachy," Spike says. Jet starts to withdraw, but he says, "Wait."

Jet walks out all the way and stands, arms folded, watching Spike, his eyes concerned and wary.

"Break the Swordfish," he says.

"Wha—?" Jet has no reference for this.

"Don't even ask. Just go in the engine and rip something out. I mean it. And take care of the Hammerhead and the Redtail, too. Make sure I can't get at them."

"What the hell's this about?" Jet holds his up hands palm-out when he sees the look Spike shoots at him. "I'm gonna do it, I just wanna know."

"You don't need to know. It's just something I need done. You in?"

"Yeah, I'll do it right now," Jet says. He looks at Spike measuringly. "Hey, Spike. Get drunk."

Spike's dumbfounded for a second, but then he gets it and nods. "Yeah, that's a good idea. Thanks." The Charlie horse finally melts, and Spike stands. The big thigh muscle twitches but shows no signs of seizing up again.

Once a junkie... He fucking suregod loathes this about himself. He goes to fetch the booze.


	10. Dimmer

"Dimmer" A/N: The canon continues to squeal and gibber in pain.

KARMA: Dimmer

Faye stares at the tiny little hole. It's black around the edges, as though the bullet singed the skin during its passage, but the inside is all red and raw and closed together. She looks at her reflection. Nope. It won't do. That's going to leave a scar, and her favorite outfit might as well be a frame for it. She reties the bandage.

Sighing, she scrounges in her limited wardrobe for something else to wear. She finally settles for a blue tank top and a pair of white shorts. She frowns; it's so plain. So not her. She'll have to go shopping. Find something that is her that still covers up her suddenly unsightly midsection.

What would her mother think? She'd probably pass out if she saw it. Her mother. Her father. Rich people living the way Faye's only dreamed ever since she woke up—hot and cold running luxury, life grown inwards. Her existence before cold sleep was almost laughably complicated, her moments scheduled one after the other, all to maintain the standards rich people invent for themselves. The perfect life. The perfect daughter. Now the perfect daughter is marred.

At least I still have good legs, she thinks.

There's racket in the hangar, and she drifts there to see what's going on.

Jet's elbow-deep in the Swordfish. "What are you doing?" she asks. "The Swordfish isn't broken."

"I'm breaking it. Spike asked," Jet says in his not-in-the-mood-to-chat tone.

"Spike. Asked you. To break his ship." Faye says it slowly and it still doesn't make sense. She says so.

"Don't be nosy." Jet glares down at her. "And stay the hell clear of Spike, got it? Don't pester him."

Faye is about to tell Jet what Spike said to her, in the context of a "Why-should-I-ever-speak-to-that-asshole-again" rant, but thinks better of it. Something is up. The only way she'd get a clearer signal would be if Jet held up a sign. "What's going on? What's wrong with Spike? What are you doing?"

"I told you. I'm disabling the ships. You won't be able to take the Redtail out for awhile," Jet says. "Unless you want to take it now and come back in a couple of days."

"I don't have anywhere to go for a couple of days. I don't even have fuel for a couple of days. Jet, what the hell is going on? Answer me!"

"I don't know myself. And I thought I said not to ask." Jet turns back to the Swordfish's innards. He makes banging noises for a few minutes, but when Faye shows no signs of going away, he sighs and straightens up again. "Spike got hold of something. And now something's got hold of him. Get the picture?"

"Job's downer thing? But one dose isn't enough to...? No way. There's no way."

"It's enough if he's already got the taste for it. Saw it all the time when I was with ISSP." Jet turns back to the engine. "Spike doesn't get to know I told you this, savvy?"

"Sure, why would I say anything?" Faye says. "I still don't know what's going on."

"Then you're even dimmer than I thought. Now scram. I got a lot a work to do."

She wanders off, biting her thumbnail. If Spike's doing the junkie shuffle, it explains the super jitters he had earlier. Still, it's weird to know someone for over a year and not know something like that about him. Not that Spike is a bubbling font of self-revelation. Come to think of it, she knows next to nothing about either him or Jet.

Well, they don't know much about her either, so that's all right.

Still, must suck to be Spike right now. She really should follow Jet's advice and stay clear of him. That would be the smart thing to do.

I'll just find him and peek around the corner, she thinks, assuaging the good angel as the bad angel eggs her on. Won't even let him know I'm in the room. Just a glance to see if he's banging his head against the wall or doing anything else amusing, and then I'm gone. Besides, he owes me for being such an ass earlier, even if there were bugs under his skin.

Faye's good angel, no saint herself, acqueisces to this plan with a minimum of fuss.


	11. Metal Origami

"Metal Origami" A/N: The Hammerhead didn't show much in the series, which kind of upsets me, so I invented some uses for it that aren't in the canon. As a matter of fact, this whole section is pretty much sheer invention.

I share Fic-Faye's opinion that Spike has an unhealthy attachment to that damned monoship.

KARMA: Metal Origami

Hammerhead:

The Hammerhead doesn't get out much. Battered, lumpy, not much to look at to the casual observer. Less racy than the Swordfish, worlds less maneuverable than the Redtail, but more powerful than both. In situations that would fold both the Redtail and the Swordfish into metal origami, the Hammerhead bulls through somehow on sheer stamina.

Like water dripping down a rock, inexorable, unstoppable, enduring, the Hammerhead is the ship you count on in an emergency, the fall-back position. The Hammerhead has horses enough to tow the Bebop if necessary—and she occasionally does.

The Hammerhead also has the added bonus of not needing as much goddamn maintenance as the fragile Redtail and that prima-donna Swordfish, Jet thinks, but her resilience can be a real pain in the ass when she needs to be broken, like now.

He disconnects the main power converter and wonders if that's enough. No. Spike's a skilled wrench monkey himself and junk's too good a motivator. Jet takes out the main power converter entirely and reroutes the sparkers to the pressure pump.

If anyone tries to start the Hammerhead now, the engine will completely short out. It would cost a fortune to repair. Jet prays Spike just gets peacefully drunk and doesn't fuck around with the ships.

Redtail:

In the cockpit of the Redtail Faye has stashed the following items in case of emergency:

-Four tubes lipstick, in various shades for various occasions.

-One tube mascara.

-One tube black liquid eyeliner.

-45,000 woolongs, locked in the console with a code so complex Faye's patience runs out before she can spring it on a whim.

-Two bags potato chips.

-One jar of coffee.

-Two changes of clothes, one sensible, one not.

-One first-aid kit stuffed with enough bandages, painkillers, sewing needles and catgut to supply a small hospital.

-Two Derringers, their thigh holsters, and ammo.

-One rigged deck of cards.

-One straight deck of cards.

-One can of dog food.

-Two panic-packs of road smokes, one she knows about and one she's forgotten.

-Three wide-tip paint markers in red, black, and blue.

-One purple yo-yo.

-One silver flask of Tijuana Jane.

-Fifteen dead bet cards with notes, transmission numbers, codes or maps on the back.

... along with all the trash she keeps meaning to throw out but never does.

Swordfish:

A memory: Faye and I bickering—for a change—and I go to wash the Swordfish. She didn't need it, but I'd had enough for one go-round. I wanted the bitch-goddess out of my face and that was the only way I could think to get it done. But she up and followed me into the hangar to stand beneath the starboard wing, screeching about a worthless hunk of junk and sexual perversion.

I've had this monoship since Doohan forked her over eleven years ago, saying she belonged to me now and I better treat her nice. It's not like I want the damn thing, but I can't part with her either. Like biting off a finger. She's a good racer and you gotta respect her.

Which pretty much explains why I turned the hose on the shrew.

She looked more shrewish than ever with her hair all slicked down around her pointy face, water pouring off her nose and chin. I didn't think there was a way for that gold lame what-the-fuck she always wears to leave even less to the imagination, but I was definitely wrong there. I stared down at her without saying a word. Sometimes it's better when I don't: gets her even more pissed.

And man was she totally furious, eyes all white. Her eyebrow twitched and she bailed. I thought she was out of my hair for good, so I carried on with what I was doing.

I was almost finished with the wing when she decked me. Felt like a punch in the ribs.

The tart had found the spare hose Jet'd been looking for for the past three weeks—probably had it squirreled away for something like this—and she went for my balls with cold water on high. What else could I do? I still had my hose in hand.

Between the two of us, we rinsed the hangar down spotless.


	12. Turkey Strut

"Turkey Strut" A/N: Just a good-old, near-required drinking scene. Mother disclaimer.

Runner-up title for this section: "The Good Times Are Killing Me."

KARMA: Turkey Strut

Spike takes another swig and holds the bottle at arm's length, closing one eye. The label wavers, but it's still legible.

"Not quite," he mutters, and brings the bottle back for another take. His arm seems three times as long as it should be.

Julia. Rocco. Vicious. Faye. Giraffe. Azimov, his fellow junkie in arms. Julia... One little bullet lets out life. Wait, Faye didn't die. Well, whatever. She definitely passed out. Bad enough. What is it with people? Spike swallows another mouthful of bourbon. He's eaten dozens of bullets at a time and stayed on his feet for the win.

"I'm lead-plated," he says. "Whoa. Getting a little slurred here."

"I'll say."

Spike looks up at Faye. "There's still only one of you. Go away. I can't deal with you unless there's two." He blinks. "That came out wrong. Let alone the fact that it rhymes." He grins.

"Hoo boy. You want some company? It's bad luck to drink alone," Faye says. She takes the bottle from him and holds it up to the light, peering at it critically. "Was this full when you started it?"

"Yup."

She swirls the remainder around. "You're going to wind up with alcohol poisoning you don't watch it. Screw Jet. Someone needs to baby-sit you."

"Screw Jet? He wishes. Gimme that." Spike snatches the bottle from her and takes a swig. His tongue and teeth are furry and carpeted. The bourbon is warm in his belly, undoing all the knots.

Faye settles carefully in the chair, crossing her legs. Spike squints at her.

"You're dressed different. Better. I approve." He finds this extremely funny and decides the joke deserves another drink.

"I don't need your approval," Faye says, taking the bottle by the neck and bringing it to her own lips. Spike watches intently as she takes a dainty sip.

"No, no, no, that's all wrong," he says. "Open your throat and let it in."

Faye coughs and stares at him.

"What?" He is drunkenly indignant.

"Not a damn thing," she says, but then she laughs. It hurts her and she winces.

"Drink enough and that won't bother you," he says.

"That's the plan," Faye says. "Okay, you watch me this time and tell me if I'm doing it right, okay?"

"Thought you didn't need my approval," Spike says. Her presence sharpens him up a bit when what he wants to be is dull, but he's far enough from sober to not really give a damn.

"I might not need it, but I'll take it if I can get it," Faye says. She tilts her head back and holds the bottle vertical. The gold fluid rushes down the neck into her mouth. Her throat works. Then she sits bolt upright and hands the bottle back to him. "Oh God, I do that again I might hurl." Her voice is choked from the strong liquor.

"Yeah, even I don't try to chug Wild Turkey," Spike says, peering at the bottle. "You took down about four shots. You stupid or just got a deathwish? That's it. You're cut off."

"As if," Faye says. "I'll fight your skinny ass for that booze and I can beat you too."

"With a hole clear through you? Hardly," Spike says, taking a drink.

"You're like, melted all over the couch. I think you couldn't defend yourself right now if your life depended on it."

"Good thing I only drink in the company of friends then, isn't it."

Faye looks thoughtful, and that's no good. "Hey. Bad things happen when your face gets that expression. I take it back. Have some more." He gives her the bottle.

She accepts, drinks, passes it back. Sometimes they drink together, the three of them, Jet and Faye and Spike, but there are always glasses with ice cubes, music playing and Jet monitoring everyone's intake so no one passes out before the appointed hour. This is different—in silence they fall into a ritual, drink, pass, drink.

Some indeterminate amount of time later, Faye stands and wobbles. "I want some music," she says petulantly. "I wanna dance."

"Better not," Spike says, but he's lost his consonants somewhere along the line. What comes out is a mumble even he can't understand. He brings the bottle up to his mouth, but it's empty. "That's not right," he says, holding it at arm's length and squinting. There are three bottles and the turkey on the gold label struts. It's a bar bottle, enough to completely tank three or four people split evenly, and he and Faye have killed the thing.

"Well, that's us totally fucked," Spike says, laughing. The bottle falls to the floor.

Faye spins around in a slow circle, her slim arms above her head, each hand holding an opposite elbow. He watches her and finally says, "Faye. Uh. Faye? There's no music playing."

She moves her hips, tick-tock, back and forth like a pendulum clock, but slow. "It's all right," she says. "I've got some in my head."

"Really?" After an epic struggle, Spike hauls himself into a sitting position on the couch.

The hem of Faye's blue tank top rides up, showing the bloodstained bandage. Suddenly it's very important that he stand, and when he stands, it's very important to go over to her, though at each stage in the process he forgets what was so almighty important about the stage prior.

Then he's standing in front of her and she wraps her arms around his neck and he puts his at her waist, his long fingers almost spanning its circumference. He moves with her in silence because he can't hear her music, but it doesn't matter all that much.

Why did he need to do this? He feels stiff fabric beneath his palm, warmed by her flesh, and remembers. Forming each word meticulously, he says, "Don't get shot again. It's not good."

"You said you were happy, you wished you did it." She buries her face in his neck. He feels her breath against his skin, uneven and rapid with drink.

"Did not. And you shot at me once. Twice. So be fair."

"Missed. Meant to," Faye says. Her voice is slowing, slurring, and some sober part of Spike suspects that only they can understand what they're saying to each other right now. It's fine, the sober part adds. You won't remember a thing about this tomorrow, so whatever.

Faye's still mumbling. "You said bullet made you happy. Even if you didn't mean to say it, that's what you said. I don't like it. Mad at you. Better ways to be happy."

"Kidding. Sorry. Okay, cruel, but it was a real bad day. Don't hold it against me."

"Yeah," she sighs. "Bad day. Bad life of Spike. It's all right, just not again. Okay?"

"Okay," Spike says, but he hasn't got a clue what she's talking about. Which is how it usually is between them. Situation normal.

He rests his cheek on her hair and lets his eyes close. He's tired, really goddamn tired all the sudden.


	13. One Fish, Two Fish

"One Fish, Two Fish" A/N: You may not be amused, but I am. Oh, how I am. Then again, I'm easily amused. I have no real explanation for the title, except that these two have drank like fish...

KARMA: One Fish, Two Fish

Faye hugs the toilet and vomits again in a sour, fluid gush. Half-digested bourbon and bile. The bitter taste gags her.

"Ow," she says, pressing the heel of her hand against her bullet wound. The strain has reopened it; sticky warmth spreads under the bandage.

Someone tries the door, finds it unlocked, and barges in. Faye pedals her feet, shoving herself against the wall, to make room for Spike.

She's still drunk enough to put her arm over his heaving back. His skin is damp with cold sweat beneath the thin white shirt.

"Ow," he says, pressing his hand against his gut wound. They stare at each other. If Spike's face is anything to go by, Faye knows she looks like death warmed over.

She grins at him. It feels a little loose.

"We're dumb," he says miserably.

She laughs and then moans from the pain.

"Yep," she agrees. "Make me a Prairie Oyster?"

"Fuck that. We gotta puke ourselves out before we can keep 'em down."

Faye gestures at the toilet with an "After you" gesture. She braces herself against the wall and uses it to lever herself to her feet. "I'm getting a bucket," she announces. "It's too far a walk from my bedroom to here."

"Smart move," Spike says. "I'll get one too—wait. There's only one bucket."

He glares up at her. She glares down at him. "I called it first. My bucket. Not yours."

"Like hell," he says.

Another instant, and they break for the door. Faye, standing, has an advantage, but Spike on his hands and knees slithers around her legs like a cat and takes off full speed down the hallway.

She's less drunk than he is. She has to be. He drank most that bottle; she sat there and watched him do it.

They reach the store room at the same time.

Glaring at each other, they stand in the doorway.

The run has made Faye queasy again and she wobbles, turning green. "Spike, find that bucket fast," she says.

"Dammit! Just hold on. You puke out there, you're cleaning it up."

"I—" Faye swallows hard against rising bile, her tongue huge and dry, "—know that." Her head pounds with the threat of the full hangover. She slouches against the door frame. "Oh, what the fuck was I thinking?" she moans.

Crashing and cursing. "It's my goddamn bucket because I'm the one getting my goddamn shins bruised to hell and back!" Spike shouts from the depths of the store room.

"You wouldn't have even thought of the bucking fucket—fuck. Ing. Buck. Ket- if it weren't for me!" Faye shouts back. She closes her eyes and thinks about Life, but the doorway swings against her back and the world revolves and she claps both hands over her mouth.

Spike half-runs, half-falls out of the store room and shoves the metal thing under her nose. The only thing she can think is, deliverance. She grabs it and empties herself into it. He thoughtfully holds her hair back.

"Oh God." Her skin goes cold. She staggers. Propping the bucket on his hip, Spike snatches her before she falls face-first to the floor.

"Shit. You're going to pass out," he says. He snorts. "I shoulda known you can't hold your liquor." Then his face goes the color of a fish belly. He shoves her to the wall and uses the bucket himself.

"You don't exactly have an iron grip on yours," Faye points out.

He sighs heavily and wipes his mouth. "Come on," he says, putting her arm over his neck. Faye's feet drag against the floor as he hauls her down the corridor. "You're going to stay with me."

"What? Don't even think about it, buster," she says, but her face is buried against his ribs, muffling her protest. He smells good and he's warm and actually, now that she thinks about it, it's not a bad idea at all.

"Don't get any ideas. It's just so you don't choke and die on your own vomit," he says, opening his door. "And so I don't have to give you my bucket. Believe me, in all the ways you can look unattractive, this has got to be you at your least cute right now."

"Thank you so much. So gallant of you," Faye mutters, falling onto his narrow bed. It kind of smells like the ocean, she thinks, but she's out before he even settles down.


	14. Sleep, Parts I and II

"Sleep, Parts I and II" A/N: Yes, it's fluff.

KARMA: Sleep, Part I

It's been a long time since he's had company in his bed. Ein sometimes left Ed's side and curled up on the pillow, but there's a big difference between a furry Welsh Corgi with dog breath and a curvy female with—dog breath.

Okay, so not a big difference.

Spike elbows Faye until she rolls and breathes in the other direction. He doesn't blame her much. He doesn't smell wonderful right now either. Still, no reason to bathe in it.

The bed's doing that thing where it spins around and around and around and he's too nauseated to pass out just yet. Part of him toys with the idea of going and getting another drink to kayoe him so he doesn't have to deal. But he's warm and the bed is narrow and Faye's legs are all tangled up with his and his arm is under her ribcage, one soft breast pressing against his forearm. If he moves, he'll wake her, and that bodes nothing but pain and misery for all involved.

If he doesn't think about the fact that it's Faye, he can almost be happy with this situation.

Oh, what the hell. Spike tucks his nose into the nape of her neck and closes his eyes. Her hair doesn't smell bad at all. She uses some kind of weird expensive ginseng-mango something or other shampoo. Women knock him out with that, smelling like fruit stands or Chinese herb shops. Julia had always smelled of a hundred different things, but most strongly of leather and cordite and honey and peaches. That was what she was like, too. Leather. Cordite. Honey and peaches.

Faye smells of spicy ginseng and mango and cigarettes and bile. Yeah, fits perfectly. Spike smiles a little, draws her closer, and passes out.

KARMA: Sleep, Part II

Drifting in and out of consciousness, Faye is aware of being held, of leaning back against something bigger and harder than she, her bare legs braided with other, hairier bare legs.

Something puffs in her ear, little hot tickling breaths. She squirms and the something moves to breathe on the back of her neck. Okay, so not really an improvement so far as her erogenous zones are concerned, but at least she doesn't have a strange noise keeping her awake.

Something stinks. Half-asleep, Faye floats through speculative dreams. A garbage disposal? A monster? Warmth on the back of her neck, along the dip of her waist, and the dreams change, become comforting. Faye twists her head, burying her nose in the pillow. Though it's hard to breathe, the pillow smells like something she wants to eat.

Food. The ocean. Her dreams take her to beaches with picnic baskets and monsters lurking in the water. It's fine. She doesn't go in the water. She's on her belly in the sand with her back bathed in hot sun.

Cold. Cold at her back. Comfort gone. She makes an unhappy questioning noise and wakes a little. He's sick. She puts her arms around him, nuzzling his shoulder blade. Though she's mostly conscious, she tells herself she isn't. Another dream. Warm skin, hard interesting complicated muscle and bone, springy curly tickling hair, best-friend voice telling her everything's okay, he's okay, she's okay: all a dream.

She curls up and waits for another dream.


	15. Idiot's Noose

"Idiot's Noose" A/N: Okay, there must be something about drinking and hangovers that I just find extraordinarily funny, or else I'm punch-drunk, because I can hardly type for laughing. I've had this kind of hangover before. I write what I know—it ain't fun.

KARMA: Idiots' Noose

Jet's at the table when Spike finally staggers into the kitchen.

"Shit," Spike groans. His distracted gaze falls on the coffee and, moving like a rusting android, he grabs a mug and pours.

"Did it work?" Jet asks, his face and voice impassive.

"I guess, but the real question is, is it worth it?" Spike flops down in the chair across from Jet. His body feels like clothing bought four sizes too large and his head is splitting. He's got dry heaves and there's no way in hell this coffee is going to stay where he puts it, but whatever. Nothing to do but take it one minute at a time. Still, this is one of the legendary hangovers. Ballads will be written about this one.

"I already went and dropped off Job," Jet says. "Here's your share." He hands over a card.

"Yeah, thanks," Spike says.

"So how'd it go with Faye?" Jet asks, trying very hard to sound as though he didn't care.

"What?" He blinks at his old friend. His left eyelid scrapes over his left cornea like one or the other is coated in sandpaper. The right eye, thank God, can't feel jackshit.

"Not even the Buddha could have slept through the racket you two made last night," Jet says.

"Oh." Spike runs his hand over his face. "No, not like that. She was gonna pass out and she was spewing like Old Faithful. I didn't want her to choke, and there was only one bucket..." And he's spent. He has to sit and breathe and marshal his forces for the next foray into his explanation. But Jet's gaping at him, completely dumbfounded.

"I see," he says. "Well, you better bleach that bucket. I don't want to see it again until it is totally spotless and every hapless germ in it has died a horrible death, you hear me?"

"Yeah, I hear you. All too well," Spike says, pinching his nose.

"And don't bitch. You're the one who drank the whole goddamn bottle. I only told you to get drunk, not attempt suicide."

"Could you keep it down? And turn the lights off? And maybe shoot me, but this time in the head?" It's Faye, talking, for once, barely above a whisper.

"She helped," Spike says, hooking a thumb at her. Moving just as poorly as he is, Faye gets a mug and pours coffee. She's shaking so hard the spout clatters against the rim of the mug. Jet takes both carafe and mug from her and neatly pours.

"How's the bullet wound?" he asks.

"I think I reopened it," she says. She torques her body as he reaches to look at it, evading him. "Not now. I'm gonna be hurling all day, the way I feel. Wasted effort."

"Waah," Spike snaps.

"Lord, I can see what kind of day it's gonna be," Jet says, throwing up his hands. He leaves the kitchen.

"You want first shower?" Faye asks.

At the thought of cascading droplets of water hitting him from all directions, Spike's stomach turns over. She grins weakly. "Yeah, me neither."

"I'm just gonna go back to bed," he says. "Sleep this bitch off."

"I guess I'll brave the shower then," she says forlornly. "I don't want my bed all stinking of bourbon. I don't have a change of sheets."

Spike grins, though it costs him. "Yeah, I didn't give a lot of thought to that one. I don't either."

"I could tell," Faye says tartly. Spike feels his face go hot and cold and hot again. Having scored a point against him, she doesn't press her luck. "I'll draw a bath. That might actually be a good thing." She leaves her brimming coffee mug on the counter and wanders away.

Spike thinks of the perfect comeback the second she's out of earshot. Now he'll never be able to use it. "Damn," he says, and sips his coffee.


	16. Praying Mantis

KARMA: Praying Mantis

Faye stares at the cigarette with the patience of a praying mantis, her eyes slightly crossed to keep it in focus. Spike stares, too, wondering what the hell is so interesting about it.

A curl of paper flakes off and floats away on the crosswinds of the air circulation system. Some chemical in the tobacco ignites with a brief hiss. The coal chews its way inexorably up to the filter, leaving a perfect little tube of gray ash behind.

Her stillness wierds him out. Faye is motion, ceaseless and frenetic; when she's like this, it means she's either sick or angsting, and neither possibility seems particularly entertaining. "You're gonna burn your fingers. Or do you care?"

She glances up and crushes the cigarette. The faint, acrid tang of burning filter hangs on the air.

Jet is gone—off to buy supplies with some of Job's bounty. By the time Spike slept off the worst of his hangover, the Hammerhead was out of the hangar. He assumes Jet fixed the other ships as well, but he has no intention of testing that theory. He still doesn't trust himself in the wide world, especially not on his home turf.

"You know, if you're really that bored, we're docked here," Spike says.

"I'm not in the mood for a casino."

"That's a change." He's on the sofa, big feet crossed at the ankle, arms behind his head. The ceiling fan squeaks as it turns and Faye's lighter snicks to life to fire up another cigarette.

"Yesterday I got a hole blown through me and last night I damn near died. If you think I want to listen to shouts and cries in this condition, you're crazy."

"I don't know why you want to listen to shouts and cries in any condition, myself," Spike says, "but hey, I don't tell you what to do with your spare time."

Her silence stretches his nerves taut; the expected retort never comes. He cuts his eyes over the mountain of his shoulder. His cybernetic right eye has enhanced peripheral vision and he can see her perfectly well. She stares at her cigarette's coal as though it holds the meaning of life.

"Would you knock that off? It's not like we've got butts to waste around here."

"Is it any of your business?" Faye says. "I've got money to buy my own, thank you. By the way—" she looks up from the coal, which is an improvement, "—you've got gum on the sole of your boot."

Spike contorts his body to look at the bottom of his foot without moving any other limb more than an inch. "Yep," he says, crossing his feet again.

"Are you just going to loll there?"

"I did tell you you were about to burn your fingers, didn't I? Doesn't that show I care?" Spike's voice is a study in elaborate boredom. "Besides, it's not like you did anything to earn that money, except serve as a meat shield for the liquor bottles."

"Considering how much you owe both me and Jet for your medical bills, you can shove it," Faye says. "I ate instant Ramen for months because of your bull-headedness."

"Bull-headedness?" Spike pedals his feet to sit upright, scraping his boots all over the cushions. Part of him hopes he left the gum there for Faye to sit on later. "I told you when I left why I was going."

"Oh, sure. 'To find out if I'm really alive.'" Her imitation of his deep, rough voice sounds like a frog croaking. "What a load of crap." She shakes her head and puffs on the cigarette.

Silence from her again. The squeak of the ceiling fan and the omnipresent hum of the air circulators are the only sounds.

"I can almost hear the gerbils running in your head, Faye. Spit it out."

"I was thinking about that one week, when you were screaming-crazy delirious. The things you said then." She turns her face away, her hair hiding the expression on her face. He's stunned: he has no memory of a screaming delirium.

But he gets an idea of what he must have said when she continues. "Julia. What a job she did on you. And Vicious. And Gren. I keep—trying to figure her out. I mean, I met her and I still don't get it. What kind of woman was she, anyway? Was she just really unfortunate, or was she somehow responsible...?"

Spike puts his elbows on his knees and leans forward to stare at the dirt-encrusted carpet. This conversation is dangerous. He's not sure he wants it now. Still, if they don't have it today, they'll have it some other day, and he's found that tough talks are easier to have hung over, when there's already general malaise and a headache and not much can make it worse. So he says slowly, still looking at the rug, "Julia was not the reason I took on the Red Dragons."

Faye's voice is bitter and he senses her eyes on him, probably slitted and disbelieving. "The hell she wasn't."

"I saw her die. Everything I did after that was... tying up loose ends." Spike reaches for his cigarettes on the table and lights one, more to hide his face behind the smoke than out of any craving. "Vicious was a loose end. So was I." He shakes his head. "Don't forget that the Bebop was under a Red Dragon fatwa as long as Vicious lived If I'd stayed, this whole ship would be crawling with gunmen. I didn't want that—not even to get rid of you."

She ignores the barb. "So if it was a Bebop problem, why did you go alone? Why do you always try to be a one man army? Dammit, Spike, it wasn't even Vicious who damn near killed you, it was the six bullets that chewed your insides to bits." Before he can answer, she continues, her voice climbing in volume, "A fair fight with Vicious I can understand. But the rest of the Red Dragons?" Her voice drops. "It didn't have to be that way. We could have come with you, watched your back, at least been there to scrape your ass off the carpet, instead of sitting around giving ourselves ulcers."

Spike looks up without raising his head. Faye's legs dangle over one arm of the big chair, her back braced against the opposite arm. Her eyes are fixed on him, intensely green, not gimlet-curious or minxy, full of a need to understand.

He figures it's his turn to ask a hard question. "If it bugs you so much, why didn't you follow me? You've never hesitated before."

"You would have shot me out of the sky."

"I would have tried," he admits, "but I've shot at you before and you've evaded. No, you know why I went alone. And you know why I felt like it was right—my time—to die there, with Vicious. What neither one of us knows is, why didn't I? Why am I still here?"

She goes pale. "That's the stupidest thing I've ever heard you say," she says flatly.

"Which part?"

"All of it. The whole thing. You didn't want to die. If that's what you wanted, you've got the Jericho and a lot of bullets and a virgin brainstem. Barrel, teeth, bullet, brain, end of Spike. So it wasn't a suicide move. As for why you're still here- dammit, Spike! You're still here because you want to be here. No one's got you chained to this life. You should know that better than anyone after all the times you've started over."

Spike processes that for a long moment.

"Tell me what you're thinking," she commands.

He drags on the cigarette, stalling for time as he figures out how to respond. Never one for the good wound, ol' Faye. Always goes for a headshot.

After he exhales, he says, "You're right. Julia's star burned out for me long before she died. When I left the Red Dragons, I chose to leave her behind, along with some part of me—the part that needed to die. Vicious was purer than that. He always was. That's why he was the first guy, and I was just the second."

"Just what the hell happened with you three?"

As he hesitates, Faye swings her legs over the side of the chair, slamming her feet on the floor. It must have hurt her, because she winces and her voice is harsh. "Now."

"What, you want a bedtime story? A fairy tale romance? 'Fraid life doesn't work like that. All I can tell you is, I never learned to like the chaos as much as those two did. I always wanted out, couldn't stand all the decay I kept seeing. That's why, even though we all used Red Eye, I was the only one bein' fireman-carried home on the days off."

Faye is silent, but he senses her listening to him with her whole body, as though his narrative is a fractious horse she can tame through sheer will. His words come hard, with many pauses as he tries to communicate to her exactly what it was like—to fight, to kill, to do it well, to even revel in it, and then to come down and see the blood and the business itself.

Spike grins mirthlessly and stares at the coal of his cigarette. He sees what Faye must see in it: a burning opal, shifting colors, like the sudden possibilities of his open future. Faye is all future, he realizes. Even if she has a past, she has powers to let it go that he doesn't have. He needs those powers now.

He's careful to keep a deadpan tone as he continues. "Julia and Vicious were together for a long time. They were alike in a lot of ways—cold. Fierce. Untouchable—nothing could really hurt them, stain them. I always considered myself a dead man walking, but the way they saw it, everybody else was dead, and they were alive."

He finishes the cigarette and lights another. He's getting into left-eye territory now.

"A few years ago I lost a serious fight in a Martian slum. A drug deal gone wrong. I stumbled to the safest place I could think of and passed out. I woke up just like I always wake up here, covered in bandages, but the difference was, Julia was smiling at me, singing to me.

"I'd wanted her for... I don't know how long, but she was with Vicious. Then Julia told me she wanted to stop seeing him. He'd been getting... crazier, further out of it as time went on, and she was scared of him. He'd threaten to kill her or himself if she left him, stuff like that. She wanted someone to watch her back.

"That started it all. For a little while, she was the only light I had. Polaris."

Spike smokes silently while he gathers strength for the next foray into this story. He wants it out. He wants this weight off him. So he plows on. "Soon, seeing her in secret wasn't enough for me, and I needed to know..." He shakes his head, exhales. "So I decided to fake my death, leave, take her with me. I took on a suicide mission against a rival syndicate. I held the fight in a church I'd rigged to blow sky-high. But after it was all over, she never showed at the meeting place, and I didn't bother finding her to ask her why."

He doesn't tell Faye about the graveyard, the rain, the roses, the minutes that passed like murder. The thoughts he had, realizing what her absence could mean—she didn't love him, she never had, she never will. She'd only used him to cut her time with Vicious with, like a meaningless additive to a drug. Or how it had been between them when he finally saw her again. _Why did you love me?_ ...Those details don't matter. Just like no one really needs to know how he lost his eye.

"Vicious found out about the plan, gave her an ultimatum—kill me or die herself. I never figured out how she managed to survive after I ran, but up until she died, I knew that I'd failed her. To make up for that—to do what she'd needed me to do to in the first place—that's why I faced Vicious."

Faye tucks her bare feet under her. "She was in a trap, like you, and she tried to escape, but she didn't make it—because of her ties to him?" She can't suppress a shudder. "I don't understand. There was nothing to love in the man I met."

"He wasn't always like that," Spike says. He remembers Vicious as a boy, startling at gun reports. Vicious' name was actually an ironic joke on Mao's part—the old man never figured the sensitive little boy would amount to anything. But Mao underestimated Vicious' ability to protect himself. Vicious didn't believe in second chances. Once injured by something, he did what was necessary to ensure that thing would never hurt him again. It was Spike and Julia's betrayal that turned Vicious into a monster. He has no intention of telling Faye that, though.

"There are things about Vicious it wouldn't do you any good to know." He stubs out the cigarette with sharp, jabbing motions. "So that's the whole sad story. Happy now?"

Her chin is propped in the palm of one hand, cigarette dangling between her fingers, and her expression is abstracted, sad. He's seen that expression before, on a few rare occasions, when she suffered on someone else's behalf. His behalf. This is a face only he has seen.

"You know what I found when I left the Bebop. Nothing. The house I grew up in was a burned-out ruin. Getting my memory back... was meaningless in the end. And that's the way it should be, because the past doesn't exist. Only the present matters... making choices to maximize my happiness in the future, and even then, nothing is certain. There is no fate. Everything is just a matter of luck and chance." She closes her eyes.

The pain vibrating through her voice makes him want to touch her, even if it's just a hand on her shoulder. He controls it. "Just because your home burned down doesn't mean your family burned with it, Faye," he says. "You could still find them."

She shakes her head, strands of dark violet hair obscuring her expression. "What burned down was my desire. If they're still out there, they may be my blood, but they aren't my family. Who I am now—what I've done with this do-over life of mine—has nothing to do with who I was raised to be, what I was supposed to do. There's no connection there, and it would be wrong of me to force one. Besides..."

She curls up tighter on the chair, drawing her limbs close to her body. She looks like a stranger in her blue tank top and white shorts, her hair loose around her face. Without the headband, her long bangs fall across her brows and nose. One strand curves towards her mouth, trembling with her breath. Spike can't tell if she plans to finish her sentence.

One thing he knows: they're both leading do-over lives. What he does with his is up to him. Polaris has burned out.

The main door to the living room rolls noisily open, and Jet cries out, "Come and get it! Fresh sushi. We made enough off Job to splurge."

The seriousness in Jet's gray-blue eyes belies his boisterous tone, and Spike suspects that he heard at least a little of the conversation. Faye ogles the bags of food. "Oooh. Is there any unagi?"


	17. Free Fall, Parts I and II

"Free Fall, Part I" A/N: Cue the angst.

Karma: Free Fall, Part I

She watches him run through his kata, smoking a cigarette out of his line of sight. Like he'd notice her anyway. Spike goes to a different space when he's serious about his workout. It's a space he inhabits when something's bothering him.

She figures what's eating him this time is everything he told her in that one conversation—which, if it still has her spun two days later, must have been hell on him to talk about.

Sweat runs down his torso, turns the red drawstring of his sweatpants the color of dried blood. The fresh scars on his body are still puckered and angry, vivid against his pale skin and older scars.

She's seen the kata enough times that she can predict its remainder, though she doesn't know the names of the moves. High punch. Low punch. Spin kick. Double punch, left; double punch, right; two punch combo; punch-kick combo, left and right. Then the deep breath.

But Spike breaks after the spin kick and turns towards a star port, puts his palm against the cool glass. Looks at stars. Perhaps he sees Julia there.

She knows more about him now, and not just what he told her. She knows, for example, that Spike's love doesn't require reciprocation—would, perhaps, even be killed by reciprocation. He loves remote, icy objects far out of reach, something pure to worship and serve. He's a one-woman man, and his loyalty, once given, is unbreakable.

She knows a few other things, too. That she loves him. That he'll never love her. That her desire to protect him is pointless, because he'll never allow it.

That she can't use the little presents he gives her, those bits of himself or his past, as a measurement for what he feels for her, because he considers those things meaningless now.

For too long, she's served him unswervingly, thinking that road would eventually lead to him when he came to trust her, rely on her. She even delivered Julia's message, the cold sweat still on her from the gun fight and the time spent in the woman's company.

But it has to end if she wants to keep her mind. Her life's a do-over, sure, but every day is a do-over. She doesn't have to keep waiting around for something she will never, ever have.

It's time to wake from the dream, and she finishes her cigarette, field stripping it onto the Bebop's floor.

X

She walks away, reflected in the star port's glass. The Redtail screams to life in the hangar. The smell of her dying cigarette coal hangs in the air.

There was a finality to her movements he didn't like one bit. A goodbye quality. He's seen it enough times in others to recognize it by now.

In spite of all the times she's fucked off in the past, this is the first time he's seen Faye move like that. So. She's going. She's not coming back. She's come to some decision that doesn't include the Bebop or Jet or him.

He looks at his reflection. The man who stares back at him looks first blank, then angry, then decisive.

He spins and runs for the hangar.

"Free Fall, Part II" A/N: Yay, plot development. Finally.

Karma: Free Fall, Part II

Jet, on the bridge of the Bebop, flips open the communications channel as the Redtail and the Swordfish fly from the hangar. They wheel in space at twelve o'clock. Jet puts his feet on the console and his hands behind his head. Figures what the hell. Enjoy the fireworks.

Spike's voice is rendered crackly by the channel and the old-ass equipment in the Swordfish. "Just where the hell do you think you're going?"

"I'm leaving."

"Wanna tell me why?"

"No."

The Swordfish opens fire with its pop-gun, aiming for the Redtail's thrusters. The Redtail spins end-over-end, looping over the rounds.

"Okay, Spike, what the fuck? You're shooting at me because...?"

"Because you're storming off in an infantile snit, again, and this time I want to know why."

"What gives you the right to question me?"

The Swordfish shoots again. The Redtail evades, wheels around, fires.

"Goddammit, Faye, you're aiming for the cockpit?"

The Swordfish drops out of the Redtail's line of fire.

"Like I could ever hit you. Please. Mr. Hotshot Pilot."

The Redtail fires again and the Swordfish cuts to the side. The Redtail's rounds leave tracer trails in their wake. The Swordfish returns fire.

"Faye, there's a part of that story I didn't tell you."

"Like what, the part where you're a hardcore masochist? I figured that out all by myself."

"Would you stop being a fucking bitch for two seconds of your life and listen?"

The Redtail reverses, hangs in equilibrium. "All right."

"When I met up with Julia again, she wanted to leave. I wanted to stay. And there's a reason for that, all right?"

The Redtail seems to hesitate in space. "To kill Vicious."

"Get it through your head already. I had to deal my past before I could move on, but I've dealt with it."

"And what does that mean?"

"I don't know. If you do, tell me. I never expected to get out of the Red Dragons alive, but I did. And I never expected to survive Vicious, but I did. All I know now is, my life's not set, Faye. And you're the one who showed me that."

Radio silence. Jet holds his breath, knowing that if either one of them catches him eavesdropping at this point, there'll be a problem.

"So stop overreacting and get your ass back in the hangar. I've had it up to my neck with this shit, and so has Jet."

Over the open frequency, there's a snick as someone lights a cigarette: more than likely Spike. The two ships hang in space, facing one another, dead and for all intents and purposes adrift. Jet imagines Spike in the Swordfish's cockpit, smoking his cigarette while he waits for Faye's decision.

"... I need a better reason."

"What, the free food and utilities don't cut it for you?" A sharp exhalation. "Faye. Just please dock the goddamn zipcraft, all right? This is not a conversation I really wanna have with Jet listening in."

Jet's chair topples over as Faye shrieks. "Wh-what gave it away, buddy?" he asks, righting the chair.

"Your boots at the very beginning. You should always put your feet up before switching on the comm channel, not after."

"All right, already, I'll dock the Redtail."

Jet closes the comm channel and opens the hangar for the two ships. The Redtail pops in first, looking, as always, like a big space-bound bumblebee; the Swordfish follows, lethal as a wasp.


	18. Ship of Fools

Spike waits in the hangar as Faye skips down from the cockpit of the Redtail. He has one hand in the loose pocket of his sweatpants; the other dangles by his side, fingers curled slightly inwards. His sweat turns to steam in the cold air of the hangar, a ghostly rime rising off his body.

She shivers, but not from the chill. The tension in the air reminds her of imminent earthquakes, tectonic plates grinding against one another, near breaking point.

"All right," she says angrily. "What's the big idea? Since when have you given a damn about my comings and goings?"

"Because this time you weren't going to come back," he says.

"Yeah, and? So? Jet's kicked both of us off this ship how many times now? And how many times have both of you said you'd be better off without me?" She slams her fist into the Redtail, the frustration too much to contain, and her voice, when she continues, is manic with rage. "I decided today was the day to make dreams come true, so I left, but for some reason I'm still standing here having yet another _useless_ conversation about it."

"When I left, you confronted me. You tried to stop me from leaving. You demanded an explanation. It's time to pay it back, Faye." He looks up at her without raising his head, his eyes cold and challenging.

"There's a difference," Faye snaps. "I tried to stop you because I knew you were going off to die, and I was stupid enough to give a damn. Since I don't have a deathwish, I really doubt that was your motivation."

Spike runs a hand through his hair, mussing it further. "You really have to make everything as difficult as possible, don't you." It's not a question. His hand drops, clenches into a fist. He looks away, showing her the arched line of his oft-broken nose. His voice, when he speaks again, is controlled, flat.

"No. You don't have a deathwish. You also have nowhere else to go. And you have people here who, like you, are stupid enough to give a damn about that."

And when did that happen? Faye wants to ask, but she knows that the time to be shrewish is past. There's something going on here. She wants it all—all the information, everything out in the open, so she can make the best bet possible. So she says, matching his tone, "Really."

"Yeah." He still doesn't look at her, doesn't open his fist.

"There are only two people on this ship other than me, now," she says carefully. "How many of them are stupid?"

He glances at her, again without moving his head, but his lips quirk into a smile at her phrasing. "One for sure. The jury's maybe out on the other, but he's historically been the one to bitch whenever you fuck off, so probably two."

Huh. It's not a love lyric, but it's better than nothing. He holds his ground as she approaches. "Why were you going to leave, Faye?"

She stops close enough to feel his body heat. He stares down at her with an unfamiliar expression in his mismatched brown eyes: she runs through all the ones she knows. It's not his mocking expression. Not his interested expression. Not his confused expression. Not his pained expression. This one, then, is new, and Faye almost wants to call it sad, but it's something more complex than that.

And even with that, she can't help pushing him just a little farther. "Don't assume too much. I haven't heard anything yet that's really tipped the scales in favor of staying."

"Explain."

Time to be brave. Show your cards, Faye.

She can't look at him. She cuts her eyes to the side. "Every day is a do-over in a do-over life. If you find yourself in a situation that isn't going anywhere and looks as though it never will, it's better to cut your losses and start over. Right?"

She feels the warmth of his breath against her forehead when he sighs. "That's making my mistake all over again, only inside-out," he says. "If you live only for the future without looking at the present—without being patient with the present—what you'll end up with is a bunch of false starts leading nowhere."

He points two fingers at his eyes. "I used to say that my left eye only saw the past, while my right eye saw the present. But everything in my past is dead, and I've started over. That's what I've been trying to tell you, but you won't listen."

"So what does your left eye see now?"

"It sees the present too, just like yours. Everything about the present, even the things you don't tell me." He holds her gaze with his. His pupils don't match—the dark center of his left eye is dilated, while the pupil of his paler right eye is normal. "It sees, for example, that you damn near caught a bullet in the gut the other day because you wanted to make sure I didn't get hit before you opened fire. That was real stupid, Faye, so that makes three dumbasses living on this ship, if you decide to stay."

There's a silence then as Faye waits for the tectonic plates to either begin to shift or stop shifting—she's not sure which. What he's said is, like everything he ever says, oblique and side-stepping; she's not sure what to make of it. But she seines out her wishful thinking and his protective sarcasm and comes up with something she can hold in the palm of her hand: Spike wants her to stay, to be patient with him, to see what happens.

She dips her head, looks at her white boots. Finally nods.

Spike takes a pack of cigarettes and a lighter out of his sweatpants' pocket. He plucks one out and offers it to her. As she accepts it and his lighter, she thinks his fingertips linger on hers, but she might be imagining things.


	19. Gun Street Girl

"Gun Street Girl" A/N: "Gun Street Girl" is the title of a Tom Waits song.

KARMA: Gun Street Girl

Small fry. Only small fry hang out in shady strip clubs, for God's sakes. Spike drops his cigarette butt into the gutter. Rushing water carries it away.

Across the street, veiled by the silver rainwater pouring off the edge of the awning under which he waits, is the strip club "Fancies." The bounty is Haber Lake, worth eighteen thousand woolongs. Ol' Haber—whose little peepshow is about to come to a crashing end—is a jockey for a number of seedy underground pornographers, running requests and products between producers, sellers and customers. All well and good, until it turns out some of the requests are far from legal. While ISSP goes after the big wheels in the pornography ring, the Mothers for the Protection of Decency League put the bounty on Haber Lake, hoping his apprehension will crack the case.

Or something like that. Spike doesn't much care. Faye's inside, executing the plan. He waits for her signal.

As he waits, he thinks: another of Jet's magnificent schemes. Get Faye trussed up in some ridiculous outfit, put her in a room full of drunken fools, have her lure Haber somewhere private, and then cuff him. The entire plan rides on Faye's ability to act like a harlot while concealing the raw wound in her side, and Spike doesn't like it. Though Faye has the walk and the talk down in spades, she knows less than she thinks she does about acting easy. A strange man's touch makes her face screw up in a scowl, and she usually ends up punching him. That kind of move would be enough to ruin the whole thing.

Jet relies on Faye more now that Spike's been out of action for two months, but Jet needs to accept the fact that he's back in play. He should be the one to go in first. If things go sideways, it'll take him a second to reach her.

He lights another cigarette. The smoke tastes of rain and the acidic mist drifting up from the overheated streets.

"Excuse me, young man," a shrill voice trills beneath him. "You really shouldn't be smoking on-camera, you know. It sets a bad example for the children."

"Aaah!" Startled, Spike spins around.

It's the pet store lady, he thinks, but a second glance proves him wrong. The height and weight's about right, but this woman is younger, her hair dyed ginger-red, and her clownish pancake makeup runs down her round face.

"What camera?"

"Oh, just this little thing here." The woman brandishes a hand-held digital palm-vid, a slick piece of equipment. It straps to her hand, leaving her fingers free, and the flesh-toned plastic blends with her skin, making it hard to spot. Spike considers swiping it. 

"Who are you?" he asks.

To his astonishment, she reaches up and plucks his cigarette out of his mouth. "I said, smoking sets a bad example. My name's Erica Dobsky. I'm a representative of the MPDL."

Aw, hell. What is a representative for the Mothers for the Protection of Decency League doing here? Spike really considers taking the camera now. "Give me my butt back, or there will be trouble. And get the hell out of here. It's not safe." Especially if she doesn't give him back his cigarette. Even though he's just had one, he feels a full-blown nicotine fit coming on. Not to mention a headache.

The communicator vibrates. Faye. Either she's completed the capture, or, more likely, gotten herself into trouble.

"Turn that fucking camera off," he snaps, and turns his back to the woman. He takes the communicator from his hip. "Yeah, what's up?"

"Oooh, action," the woman squeals. She jumps up and down in front of him, waving her hand in his face. He smacks it away.

"I can't get Haber alone." Faye's voice is a bare thread of sound under the crackle of the poor connection. He imagines her somewhere dark, bent over the communicator, whispering. "Turns out I'm not his type."

"His type." The hell should that matter?

"Let's put it this way: you should be in here, not me."

Aw, great. "So what do you want me to do?"

"Get your ass in here! What else?"

Faye cuts the connection before he can respond.

Erica stares at the palm of her hand, replaying the footage. "That's not bad, but could I ask the both of you to refrain from cursing when I'm filming?"

That's it. Spike reaches the end of his limited patience. "Just what the hell do you want, lady? I told you to get out of here. You're about as inconspicuous as a carousel."

She glares up at him. Opens her mouth. Begins to scold. Spike tunes it out, watching her mouth move. He takes back his cigarette while she's distracted. Thank God, he thinks, dragging on it.

He tunes back in as she calms down. "... and no one told me bounty hunters were so rude," she says. "I'm just trying to get some video of the capture of the man we've all beggared ourselves to put a bounty on. Don't we deserve that little?"

"Not if it prevents us from capturing the guy to begin with," Spike says. Which reminds him: annoying little terrier woman aside, he's got to bail Faye out. He walks across the street, leaving the woman beneath the awning. Or so he thinks. He's not even halfway across the shining street when she appears at his side again. She's so short he can see the part of her hair; she barely comes up to his ribcage.

Rain patters on his skull. He pushes his wet hair out of his eyes. His cigarette is soaked, dead in his mouth, and he doesn't care. He sets himself absolutely to ignoring the woman.

"Listen to me, young man," Erica says in a brush-your-teeth-and-go-to-bed voice. "We are your employers. We can and will exercise our rights to tape this capture, and that is all there is to it." She smiles up at him sunnily. "So let's try to get along, shall we?"

"We'll get along fine as long as you don't fuck me up," Spike says, intentionally cursing to annoy her.

"I'm going to have to edit this," Erica says mournfully, fiddling with the camera's straps.

Spike draws up to the door. The bouncer is a big guy, chains wrapped around his arms and waist. "No guns, no knives, no shuriken, no nunchucks," he says in a monotone. "No barebacking, no harrassing the help, and no alcohol on the premises."

What is this place, a daycare center? Spike shrugs. "Whatever."

"Go on in," the bouncer says, opening the door. He shoots a questioning look at the tiny woman at Spike's side, then at Spike. He raises his eyebrows.

Spike fakes a smile. "I've got a thing for dwarves," he says.

Erica sniffs and turns her nose up. Spike's smile turns real.

"Just keep it in the background," the bouncer mutters.

Once inside, Spike cases the place. Cages with men in them; bondage crosses with men on _them;_ various couches, ditto; dance floor, ditto.

Oh sure. Gay sex club.

"Fanfuckingtastic recon, Jet," he says to himself. Imitating his partner's deeper voice, he says, "'It's a strip club, Faye.' 'It'll be a piece of cake, Spike.'" Jet's really lost his touch without Ed to rely on, he thinks gloomily.

"Oh no!" Erica squeaks. "I'll never be able to show this!"

"You could always add mosaics," Spike says. He advances through the crush of bodies.

He's irritated. The minute Faye saw the score, she should have withdrawn. They could have come up with a better plan. But no—she had to be stubborn, try to make the plan work anyway. What the hell is she trying to prove? And she calls him pigheaded.

He'll never be able to find her in this mess, anyway. He fades into a corner and pulls the communicator off his hip, but before he can page Faye, the MPDL representative is back, shoving her palm in his face. Or trying to. She's so short the only good shot she's getting is of his Adam's apple.

"Would you back off?" He swats her hand away for the second time, and not gently.

"Ow-ow-ow," she whines. "Be careful—this is a delicate and expensive piece of equipment—what?" She stops shaking her hand and looks at her palm, mystified.

Spike pockets the camera. "Mine now."

The communicator buzzes harshly—the highest priority signal. He opens it. "What?"

He can barely hear her over the pounding music in the club. "Spike, where are you? He caught on. Haber's on the run."

Erica jumps around him, trying to reach into his pockets. He evades her by swinging his back to her. "Give me back my camera!"

"Who the hell is that?" Faye sounds out of breath. He hopes it's from running and not from pain.

"Don't worry about it. Where's he headed?"

"He's got a little monoship. I'm chasing him in the Redtail. He's headed off the asteroid."

"Shit." It'll be impossible to follow Haber if he Gate-jumps, and the Redtail, maneuverable as it is, isn't nearly fast enough to catch up. "Try to head him off. I'll be right there."

He turns and runs out of the club, careless now of the attention he might attract, leaving Erica behind in the corner.

For a split second, he actually manages to forget about her, but then she starts to scream. "THIEF! THIEF!"

Spike's forward momentum is checked by the bouncer's thick arm across his chest. "You mind?" Spike snaps, glaring up at him.

"I hear someone yellin' thief, I gotta investigate. Nothin' personal," the bouncer says.

"It's her fucking camera. Here. Give it back to her. I gotta go." Spike whips the little camera out of his pocket, but the bouncer holds him fast.

"You mighta taken some other stuff, too. I gotta search you," he says.

"Are you fucking kidding me?" The bouncer is not. His broad, pockmarked face is dead serious. The idea of this massive chunk of granite searching him is just not a runner.

Spike considers the variables, comes to a decision, and kicks the man in the head.

Erica finally arrives, her loose flesh wobbling with her panting. "Oh no!" she screams.

The bouncer recovers, spitting out a tooth. "Nice kick," he says with a nasty smile. "Let's see what it can do against chains."

X

"Attempted robbery, assault, destruction of public property, destruction of private property..."

Jet's voice, reciting the usual litany, echoes in the narrow concrete hallway as the man approaches. Spike sits on the edge of the cot in the holding cell, a cigarette burning down between his fingers. He hates jail cells. They all smell the same: sweat, urine, cigarette smoke and cold metal. He associates that smell with boredom.

"...disturbing the peace, and finally, just to top it all off, two counts of privacy invasion for having the camera on inside that damn club." Jet draws up to the cell and wraps his cybernetic hand around one of the bars. "You've always been a pain in the ass, but you're getting real expensive these days, Spike-o."

"Yeah, so how much were all the fines this time?"

"Twenty thousand woolongs, and that's after I pulled a lot of strings. They were close to charging you with attempted murder, the shape you left that bouncer in," Jet says. "Well, come on. You're free to go."

"If Faye managed to get Haber, his bounty should just about cover it." Spike stands and stretches to the full extent he's capable, shackled hand and foot as he is. The guard opens the cell door, unlocks the cuffs around his wrists and ankles. Spike nods his thanks as he exits the cell.

"She lost track at him at the Gate."

"Figures," Spike says. He sticks his hands in his pocket, slouching over his aching stomach. The bouncer got one good punch in there, and it hurts like hell.

"'Figures?' If you hadn't been fooling around with that damn woman, who, by the way, was the one to send you up the river with all that robbery nonsense, you would have been watching Faye's back."

"It's not like I had a choice about that and, while we're on the subject, I'm not the one who screwed up." Spike glares at his old friend. "You said it was a strip club, not hot and cold running men. Not to mention Faye should never have allowed that guy to get to his ship, since she knows the Redtail can't keep up."

Jet shoves him down the hall with a none-too-gentle hand between the shoulderblades. "Before you give Faye any static about that, you should remember who wound up in jail tonight, buddy."

Spike doesn't have anything to say about that, and Jet doesn't seem to be in the mood to talk anymore. He silently climbs into the cockpit of the Swordfish to return to the Bebop.


	20. Black and Gold

"Black and Gold" A/N: Now that the goofiness is out of the way, I can go back to doing what I do best. Spike's characterization in this section comes mostly from "Brain Scratch" and "The Real Folk Blues," particularly the way he looks and touches Faye in those episodes.

Post-writing-it A/N: Huh. Go figure. I really wasn't planning on the turn this section took at the end. Interesting...

KARMA: Black and Gold

"Good job, Spike. Really great. You're a genius at getting arrested." Her jibes are the last thing he wants to hear as he enters the Bebop's living room.

He lights a cigarette and walks down the stairs, his hands in his pockets. "I can say the same for you," he says. "If you tried harder, you probably could've screwed that up even more."

"Losing that bounty was a team effort." She reclines on the couch; all he can see are her spike-heeled boots dangling off the edge of the far arm. Black patent leather. They reflect the overhead light in streaks of gold.

"I'll say. Between your carelessness and Jet's incompetence, I'm surprised we don't starve to death." He flops down in the chair and flinches. It hurts, but he doesn't think the bouncer reopened anything. Just a bruise on top of everything else.

"I'm careless? You're the one who picked a fight while you're still held together with three miles of catgut." This isn't a catfight, not yet; this is the growling prelude. Her voice is lazy, but laced with sarcasm like strychnine in coffee.

She struggles to sit up, still trussed up in her undercover outfit. Corset, check; lace-up leather pants, check; knee-high boots, check. She looks like she can barely breathe, let alone run. Her breathlessness over the communicator makes sense now.

Her cat eyes are even more catlike surrounded by black eyeliner and gun-metal gray shadow, her mouth slick with lipstick and gloss. Her cheeks glow red with blusher. Spike tries to look at her as a stranger would, but he can't separate what he knows of her from her appearance; knowing what he does, she looks more silly than sexy, a little girl playing dress-up.

Someone with Faye's looks doesn't need all the leather and hard-edged makeup. The get-up was Jet's idea. He probably really enjoyed lacing her into it, too. Strip club, his ass: the old man's gotten too used to using Faye as bait, and Faye's gotten too used to following Jet's orders without thinking them through for herself.

Spike's voice is edgy. "No wonder you couldn't keep up with him in that rig. This keeps up, one day Jet's gonna send you in somewhere buck naked. Or maybe he'll wrap some bandages around you, make you a fetishist's dream girl."

"Look, if it's Jet you're mad at, take it up with him. Don't take it out on me." She sounds tired. She pushes her disheveled hair out of her eyes. What he first mistook for blush on her cheekbone is actually a fresh bruise. Now the signs of a lost fight are all over her: the left shoulder strap of her corset is broken; it dangles loosely along the line of her breast. There are marks on her shoulders, scratches or other bruises; he can't easily tell.

Somebody clocked her pretty good. Suddenly he doesn't feel so much like having the fight that's brewing. "What happened?" he asks.

There's a long pause before she answers. "There was some nasty with Haber," she says finally. "I didn't take him down."

Spike smokes and thinks about that. Faye's hand-to-hand skills are good but not unbelievably so, and he can't imagine what kind of stance she'd be able to manage on those wobbly little heels. All the more reason why Jet should have sent both of them in.

Stop blaming Jet. He was the one who got all distracted with that Dobsky woman. He was the one who should have been there and wasn't, and now here's Faye, busted up because of it. The anger in him twists inwards.

He doesn't like the way she sits, her back stiff, shoulders pulled back, her face blank and expressionless and her eyes all unfocused. Steeled for his next sarcastic comment. He tries to make peace.

"I've got some medicine for that bruise on your face. Probably help the swelling."

"Don't trouble yourself on my account," she says.

He rises from the chair. "I was going to get it anyway. That bouncer got lucky and nailed me once."

"Once? You're losing your edge," she says.

"You didn't see the guy. It was like taking on Mount Rushmore," Spike says.

This wins a smile from her and he relaxes. He isn't going to apologize to her—hell, no—but it seems as though he's managed to avert a full scale war. He gets the medicine chest from his room.

X

His fingers on her face are gentle, and his face near hers is intent, concentrating on his work.

The balm he spreads over the bruise has a sharp, medicinal smell, so heavy she can taste its bitterness on her tongue, and it tingles as it sinks into her flesh. "What is this stuff?" she asks.

"Aloe, mint, some other things," he says. "I don't know what all, but it's good for bruises."

"Why are you doing this?"

"Huh? You wanna do it?" He takes his fingers away from her cheekbone. "If you do, use a mirror. It'll sting like a mad bastard if you get it in your eye."

"No—I mean, go ahead." She can't ask again. Why are you doing this? Because the answer she wants to hear is, he wants to because it's her, because he's sorry, and the answer she's likely to get is because it's easier to slather her face up with expensive medicine himself than to trust her with it.

Spike dips his fingers back into the little pot of medicine sitting on the coffee table. The air is filled with the pungency of herbs. He moves on from her face to her shoulders, drawing his fingers down the bruises where the straps cut in; Haber had yanked her around by them. Her skin quivers in the wake of his fingers. She imagines gold phospherescence trailing over her collarbone, and she hopes he doesn't notice her reaction.

He finishes. His face is still very near hers, and her breath catches. He puts his fingers under her chin and tips her face upwards, staring down at her for moment that stretches like warm taffy in the silence of the living room. The gold overhead light dazzles her eyes, throws his face into shadow. Her world is Spike, looming over her, light streaming over his shoulders.

She detects his scent beneath the heavy, minty odor of the balm. Woodchips and salt, smoke and coffee. She breathes it in. Even if she never has more of him than this, there's a part of her that thinks it could possibly be enough.


	21. Gold and Black

"Gold and Black" A/N: Well, darn it. Fic-Spike surprised me. I was going to move on to the third bounty arc—the one that closes out the whole shebang—and he decides he actually wants to DO something. There goes my tidy little outline. Watch this thing swell to mammoth proportions!

Every story I write has what I call "a seed sentence," one sentence that starts the whole thing. I was saving the seed sentence for KARMA for Karma, Part II (the final section), but it wanted to be here, so have fun finding it (it's fairly obvious, methinks).

KARMA: Gold and Black

"Could you help me with mine?"

The second the words are out of his mouth he wants them back. He can tend to his own damn wound. But they drift in the air between them, and Faye, looking up at him with that naked expression in her eyes, nods.

"Yeah. Let me change first, though."

"All right," Spike says.

As he waits for her, he takes off the blazer, the tie, the button-up shirt, throwing them into a little heap on the couch. Beneath the tingle of the medicine on his fingertips is the memory of Faye's skin. He almost kissed her, and he's more surprised by the fact that he didn't than the fact that he wanted to. Out of all the times he's felt the urge to kiss her—and this was far from the first—this was the one that felt right. He wonders if it was a transient moment or an enduring thing. The answer'll have to wait until she comes back.

He traces the sword cut, remembering for the first time without bitterness the means by which he'd come by it. Vicious' sword, biting in; the amazing, dizzying, unreal pain; the slippery, sticky feel of his guts. He'd stuffed his hand in the gaping hole to stumble back down to the first floor of the headquarters, holding his insides in. He remembers all that, but there's a lot he doesn't remember—like how he got back on the Bebop and whether Faye had to handle those entrails herself. He hopes, for her sake, she didn't.

There are things they don't say to each other. "Thank you." "I'm sorry." His fingers on her skin just now had been his first real apology to her, for not being there, for taking his temper out on her. For all the times he's done those things.

He hears her footsteps behind him and turns to face her. This is Faye, the shrew, the thorn in his side ever since she first set foot on the Bebop, the thief, the pain-in-the-ass and sometimes-friend who wavers like candle flame now, her face changing expressions too fast to read. Watching her, he feels a mix of emotions so tangled and intense it's almost pain, and he can't begin to parse them all out. All he knows is, they're there, and they've been there for awhile. Exactly how long is something he'll have to work out later.

"Hey," he says. It's stupid, but he can't think of anything else. He picks up the balm and hands it to her.

Her eyes are enormous, the pupils bottomless and dilated in the middle of all that vivid green. She hasn't washed the makeup off—she can't, he realizes, without washing the medicine off, too. It shines on her cheekbone. The swelling is already less.

She swallows and dips her fingers in the balm. He lifts his arm to stretch the scar so she can reach all of it. It extends from near his navel up to his ribs and around to his side: a deep, savage wound befitting Vicious' last act. When she touches it, it's as though she's trying to erase it.

He twitches. She feels it, pauses, looks up at him quizzically. "Don't worry about hurting me," he says.

"It's not that," she says. And then she puts her other hand on his waist, holding him still as she applies the salve. Her fingers flex on the muscles of his lower back. Her breath quickens; she looks up into his eyes—a brief, flickering contact. Whatever she sees there makes her look away.

Spike exhales slowly through his nose, a breath that's almost a sigh. He gives up. Even if it's a mistake—and he's ninety percent certain it is—there's only so much self-control in the world, and he's already used all his up. He moves closer to her. Now their bodies are separated by the thinnest sliver of space and air. He feels her warmth, the rhythm of her quickened breath. He thinks he feels her pulse vibrating between them, though it may be his own.

There have been other women since Julia—quick things, one-night stands. Nothing serious. Just bodies. This is different; the tension, anticipation, it's familiar and strange at the same time.

Julia and Faye, he realizes, have a strange karma: any man who loved one would love the other, even if it was just a minute or a day.

He tips her chin up with the tips of his fingers, and he knows they can stop this. All it would take is one sharp word, one sarcastic jibe, and the tension would transmute into yet another fight. Has anyone ever been gentle with Faye? He doesn't know. Has anyone ever been gentle with him? That's a good question, too.

"You look so serious," she says. Her voice is a papery whisper.

"I don't really know what I'm doing here," he admits. The corners of his lips quirk.

"Does anyone ever?"

That's a point. He dips his head and skims her lips with his, once, twice, again, waiting until she follows his movements, asking silently for more, before he kisses her.

She wraps her arms around his body, holding him without pressure. Afraid of hurting him. But her lips opens under his, and her tongue entwines with his, and she tastes like night clubs and street lamps. Her mouth is hot as coffee, and goes through him the same way, lighting him up, waking him as though from a long dream. Her nails dig into his back as he deepens the kiss. He feels dizzy, but he doesn't stop.

He moves his hands from the stiff bandage around her waist up her back. She's frail as china, ribs and spine; she arcs under the pressure of his palms, bringing her hard against him. Her breasts are soft against his chest, her belly pressed against his, and she doesn't pull away.

He's almost lost her a hundred times, and he's sick of it. This time he'll keep the woman and protect her for as long as it lasts. He doesn't bother asking himself how long that will be. This is the present, one of a series of moments like pearls on a string, and he won't waste time trying to count ahead of the one he holds in his palms now.

Her hair is soft and warm on his hand as he cradles the back of her head, supporting her against his force. She trembles, but so does he. She bites at his lip, demanding more, and he smiles against her mouth. Enthusiastic. And innocent. No one who's had many men would be as open as she is right now.

It would be a mistake to give in to her. He raises his head.

She makes a disappointed noise and slowly opens her eyes. He takes a deep breath, summoning some ghost of control, and loosens his hold on her.

"Greedy," he says.

"Yes," she agrees. "What's wrong?"

"Mostly the fact that Jet is out in the world and that's the door he'll be using to come back," Spike says, grinning and hooking a thumb at the living room entrance. "I don't know how you feel about it, but I'm not wild about the idea of him returning to a tangle of limbs on the couch."

Her fingers linger on his waist as she releases him and steps back. He gives her a second to collect herself, but he smiles as he watches her. Her mouth is red and swollen, her eyes shining, her hair mussed. She's confused and frustrated but also relieved, and she looks at him with arousal and wariness warring in her eyes.

"Come on," he says, holding out his hand to her. "I'll feed you."


	22. In the Lee

"In the Lee" A/N: I like Jet and Faye conversations, because the main canonical support for 'shipping them is that Faye is basically a big kid and Jet's a "daddy," to put it in the sickest possible way. Thing is, I think Faye wouldn't appreciate that much. She may be a big kid, but it's not her fault; her ultimate goal is to be independent.

There's not much Spaye in this section, because it's from Jet's POV. Cue the dramatic irony.

KARMA: In the Lee

Jet finds Faye on the bridge, leaning against the starport. One foot is propped on the bulkhead; her cheek rests against the plexiglass so her breath leaves grey streaks across the stars. She's always liked to watch as the Bebop leaves atmosphere: she once told him it was like watching night fall in fast-forward. But this time, the set of her shoulders, the line of her back, communicate something other than interest: she reads the stars like an astrological chart, trying to find her future.

"What's with you?" he asks. "It was only eighteen thousand woolongs, and besides, losing the guy wasn't your fault. Doesn't mean nothin'. Let it go."

"It's got nothing to do with that."

"Oh, I'm not worried. I enjoy the quiet. Though I'm sure you'll be back to shrieking and screaming as soon as you heal up enough. Speaking of, that's why I been lookin' for you. I gotta take a look at that wound, see how it's comin' along."

"It's fine. I already put a new bandage on it."

Jet snorts, giving his unspoken opinion of her doctoring skills. He puts the medical kit on the console and checks the route: away from the asteroid, through the Gate, into the waste space between Jupiter and Saturn. "Got a lead on a new bounty. Spike's in better condition than you are right now, so why don't you sit this one out?"

"And lose my share? You must be out of your mind." She still hasn't looked at him, keeping her gaze fixed on the stars outside.

"All I'm askin' is that you consider it," Jet says. "Now stop lollygagging over there and let me look. If that thing gets infected, you're in for a rough time."

"I put disinfectant on it," she says, but she pushes away from the starport. Her body movements are slow like the way people move in dreams. Jet blames the wound. A gunshot is more than just an injury; it's a hole, and the nerves and muscles damaged throw off her balance. He hopes it's temporary. Her new way of moving and her change of clothes make her seem like a stranger.

"If you get belly-shot again, you're gonna wind up standing like Spike," Jet says. "C'mon, this way."

"I always thought that scarecrow just had lousy posture," she says.

"Nah, used to be ninety percent of the time he was guarding some gut wound," Jet says. "I s'pose by now it's a bad habit. But it would look pretty lousy on you, so keep a look out, will ya?"

"You all act like I threw myself in the way of that bullet." She settles on a storage unit and pulls up the hem of her tanktop to expose the bandage. She keeps her midsection straight so Jet can reach the ties.

He regards the wound thoughtfully. "Well, I'll be damned," he says, rewinding the bandage. "You actually did a good job with it."

"I can take care of myself, you know," Faye snaps.

"And how many bullet wounds of your own have you had to deal with? Just this one, am I right?"

"Yeah, because, I repeat, I can take care of myself. I don't make it a habit to be where bullets are flying around."

But for a year, she's been living with someone who does, and Jet figures she gained her skills with field dressings from tending to Spike. Not that Spike would ever thank her. He glares at the linen dressing.

"Ow! Watch it, Jet!"

Oops. "Sorry, Faye." He loosens the tie.

He returns to the navigation console, making unnecessary course corrections and getting early clearance from the Gate officials. She stays where he put her, smoothing the tanktop over the wrappings. "How much longer do you think this is going to take to heal?" she asks.

"A couple of weeks and you can probably take the bandages off. You'll have to baby it for about a month to be safe." He likes his voice. It sounds businesslike.

"You think it'll leave a scar?"

"No avoidin' that. It'll look like someone put a cigar out on you. Which," Jet glances over his shoulder, grinning, "if you want, you could probably play up."

"Fuck off, Jet," Faye says, but the curse lacks conviction. She drifts over to the navigation console and stares at the lines and numbers as though she knows what they mean.

"So what's going on with the new bountyhead?"

"A diamond thief working the void between Saturn and Jupiter. Gonna be a few days gettin' there."

"There are diamonds in deep space?"

"Diamond dust," Jet corrects her. "Corporations run auto-bots that vaccuum space dust and separate out precious elements and minerals: gold, diamonds... The bounty's been going around emptying out their bins. It's a slow way to earn a carat, but if you have the patience, you could make billions of woolongs. That's what this girl's been doing." He brings up the image of the bountyhead.

"Chesapeake McAfee." Faye reads the name aloud. "She looks... capable."

"The word you're looking for is 'crazy,' but yes, she is capable. Other bounty hunters have gone after her and been returned in pieces. One looked like he'd been fed through an auto-bot's separater unit. She's vicious, and she doesn't play games. That's why I want you to sit this one out."

Faye clocks the bounty figure. "Wow. That would put a big hole in my debt."

"It's the diamond industry's baby. They've all pooled together to pony up the goods. I checked it out and it's legit."

"So I'm in," Faye says. "You can't keep me out of this. Not when that crazy bitch basically represents my freedom."

Jet massages his temples. Faye's voice doesn't sound greedy; what it sounds is elated, and that is a sound he's not heard in her voice for a long time now. "All right, all right. But promise me one thing."

"What?" She blinks.

"If you take that woman down, would you please put that money towards your debt and not into a casino? Even half of it would make me happy. I'm sick of getting the Bebop all shot up to hell and gone evading collection agencies."

"All right. If we take that woman down, I'll put half of her bounty figure into my debt."

"Wait a minute, Faye—I meant half of your take, not half the figure!"

"A promise is a promise." She walks away, laughing.

"We'll just see about that!" Jet shouts after her. "Women!" he says. He shakes his head and turns back to the bounty information displayed in glowing candy colors on the console.

Chesapeake McAfee's picture is an old one, from her last round of incarceration and failed rehabilitation; since that last, she hasn't set foot on a planet or moon for years. Her rap sheet shows various crimes, all anti-social in nature; she's been in and out of treatment facilities since she was a kid. Then, nothing for five years, while she started up her career as a diamond thief. After that, the rap sheet blooms with violent murders and assaults.

Jet reads more than her crime list; he reads her psychological profile, contrasting it with others he'd seen while with the ISSP. He again has doubts about sending Spike and Faye, both injured now, after her. She's insane, not in the way that would get her off in a court of law, but in the way that would get Spike and Faye shipped back to the Bebop in little plastic envelopes. Spike's gunmanship and Jeet Kun Do don't mean much in zero gravity, and all Faye has going for her, defense-wise, is her charm; this bounty definitely has the upper hand so long as she remains in zero-G.

Jet settles down and begins thinking of strategy.


	23. It Ain't Ever Gonna Rain Here

KARMA: It Ain't Ever Gonna Rain Here

No food, no beer. Her life has officially entered the third circle of Hell. Faye stares into the open fridge as though she can summon sustenance through the power of her thoughts.

Spike. He kisses her, then ignores her. He runs off in the Swordfish to God knows where, but he strips the fridge down to the very polish on its walls first. When is he coming back? Is he coming back? He could be stoned stupid in an alley somewhere. Or more likely smeared across it.

She tries to kick the door shut, misses, kicks the wall instead. Stubs her toes. Of course. "Aaaargh, I'm going crazy! Where is he? Why didn't he take his communicator?"

"If he managed to make his way back after that last stunt, there's not much that can keep him away." Jet. Sitting in the living room without a care in the world, smoking and watching some old Western on the vid.

"Oh, thank you so much for that particular reminder. I feel better now," Faye says. "Let's hope and pray he returns in at least as many pieces as he did the last time, so we can have another fun-filled two months starving to death."

She flops into the chair opposite Jet's.

He keeps his eyes on the vid, but says, "The top of your head's gonna grow lonely as mine if you don't stop worrying about him."

"Fortunately, male pattern baldness doesn't concern me," Faye says.

"I'm talkin' about you pulllin' your hair out. Leave him be. He's healin' up, you know, and that means he can come and go as he pleases, just like you. You're not his keeper."

She isn't, but that's small consolation. Faye smokes and glares as the Western's music swells and tinny gunfire rings out.

Jet laughs. "Serves you right, you old chump."

X

It ain't ever gonna rain here  
No, it ain't ever gonna rain.  
It will never ever rain here  
Until I see you again.

Pho999, Ganymede's black market district. The fragment of ballad comes from a staticky old radio on some shopkeeper's sill. When Spike pauses to light a butt, the song enters him like the smoke. A woman singing, a few isolated piano notes. He appreciates the spareness of it, the strained, haunted quality of the singer's voice.

It actually isn't raining here, which is unusual for Ganymede. Spike drifts on. He skims the offerings out of the corner of his cybernetic eye, careful not to let his interest be known: there are sellers here who won't take no for an answer, and he's not in the mood to brawl. Still, there's something he wants to find, and this is the place for it. Ganymede: fish and stolen goods from across the solar system.

Tents and small shops line both sides of the street. The sellers boldly display their wares: ISSP leaves this place alone. It's a way station, a place where the hunters and the hunted can find what they're looking for with a nod to one another as they pass.

The fertile tang of fish guts, blood, salt. Spike follows the scent out of Pho999 to the wharves where the fishermen—honest men—pitch overflowing nets off ships held together with prayer and wire. He stands near one of the floating wrecks. His shadow streaks across the planks of the pier, darkens the strands of the net and the scales of the catch. The boat's name is stenciled in black faded to gunmetal gray along her side: the _Demeter._

The _Demeter's_ captain is a woman, brown hands gnarled with work and age. Her bushy eyebrows remind him of clouds; the shoulders that strain against her stained work shirt are stiff with wiry muscle. She mends nets. A silver hook flashes through snarled silver wire.

"Help you?" The grunt is not precisely friendly or unfriendly. It's filled with _I've been on the sea for days and days and you are taking up my precious time,_ though, so Spike decides to get to the point.

"Anyone fishing for rock lobster these days?"

That gets her attention. She stops and her wiry eyebrows rise. She stares at him, and he realizes, with a small shock, that she had probably once been pretty. Her eyes are still a vivid mint green between squinted lids. "You tryin' to get my license revoked? Them things are protected."

"I know."

When he shows no sign of going away, the captain puffs a short breath. "Get th' catch out th' hold before it turns over," she snaps over her shoulder at her first mate, who disappears down below.

She turns back to him. "You check Pho?"

"I didn't want to spend too much time there without knowing who to look for," he says.

"You prob'ly smart. Prob'ly trouble, too, from the looks a you," she says. "What you want with a Ganymede rock lobster?"

"Does it matter?"

"Yeah," she says. She fiddles with the broken strands of the net. "I had me a cowboy just like you one time. He bought me a rock lobster. Cooked it real good, too, then took off with all my money and anything that warn't nailed down."

Spike smiles. "Well, that's what I'm trying to do. Cook a rock lobster for a woman, though this time it's _because_ I took off."

The captain nods. "I get you," she says. "You wanna find a man named Tobias Nome. He's got what you want, but he ain't gonna make it cheap for you. You got 'cowboy' written all over you, son."

Spike smiles again. If he wasn't so pressed for time, he'd buy this woman a drink and listen to her story, but he is, so he thanks her and goes.

If she stares after him, thinking of her own cowboy who'd gone and left her, he doesn't look back to check.


	24. Dinner

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> This is absolutely my favorite thing I have ever written.

"Dinner" A/N: I love writing Spike and Faye caterwauling sessions. Even after they express their feelings to one another, it will always be this way. That's just how they get down, although now Spike has a few more tricks up his sleeve than just wandering away to wash the Swordfish.

KARMA: Dinner

Well, that was... fun. He never expected that. Spike swings his legs out of the Swordfish and reaches back in for the cargo. The rock lobsters are in ice coolers. He grunts as he wrests them out from behind the pilot's seat.

Turns out Mr. Nome did not want to sell Mr. Speigel a rock lobster, let alone two rock lobsters, for any price. It took some negotiation with the Jericho before an agreement was reached. Even wound up giving him a discount. Spike smirks.

"And just _where the hell_ have you been?"

Ah, yes. Faye. The reason for the whole upset. That, Spike thinks, is possibly the best description for her he has ever come up with. He brushes by her. One of the ice coolers knocks against her hip. She ignores it, if she even notices it to begin with, and trails after him to the kitchen, still ranting.

"We've reached the bounty's last known location. You didn't take your _communicator._ This one's going to be tough and you just ran off for no good reason—again! When are you going to stop being so pigheaded and just let us know what you're up to?"

Spike puts the coolers on the kitchen table and takes a pot out from beneath the counter.

"Oh, now he's hungry." Faye throws her hands up in the air. "Probably because you destroyed some two-bit honky tonk tavern on some two-bit asteroid colony that you're going to stick us with the bill to repair, just like always!"

He smiles, but his back is to her and she doesn't see it. He has a bet with himself for how long it takes her to catch on to what he's doing and why. He's going to enjoy watching her eat her words—literally, in this case.

"I swear to God, the only thing you're good at is accruing debts. You're worse than I am! Well, that and collateral damage. You see a building still standing, it's like a personal goddamn insult and—what's that?"

"This," Spike says, "is a Ganymede rock lobster." He lifts a purple crustacean out of its chest. It's freezing cold on his palm, but still waves its pincers weakly. Huh. Resilient little fucker. This one's mine, he decides.

"It's hideous," Faye says.

"It's edible," Spike says, "and I went to a little trouble to get it, and now I'm going to boil it alive and eat it." He holds the lobster up to his face. "Yes, yes I am, you cute li'l lobster you."

"Don't play with your food." Faye's voice is absent, stunned. "So that's where you've been? Getting yourself _dinner?_ "

He grins at her. The lobster wriggles in his hand. "I told you I'd feed you, didn't I? You didn't really think I meant that Ramen two days ago."

He has the rare pleasure of seeing Faye completely speechless. Whistling tunelessly, he fills the pot with water and puts it on the stove. The lobster, he puts on his head. His next bet with himself is how long Faye will let it stay there, pricking his scalp with its armored toes, before completely losing her mind.

"Go say hello to your new friend," he says. The water steams, gray wisps spiralling up from its placid surface. Not quite yet.

"I am not going to make an acquaintance with something I'm going to eat," Faye says. "Especially not something alive and wriggly. And are you sure that's even sanitary? I don't want your hair in my lobster-killing water."

Spike can't think of a comeback, so he shrugs, plucks the lobster off his head, turns around, and places it neatly atop hers.

"Aaaaah, what the hell do you think you're doing?" Faye reaches up to grab the lobster and it pinches her finger. "Aaaah!"

"It matches," he observes.

"Fuck you, Spike, and get this thing off my head."

The water is boiling, so Spike does as he's told. "Say goodnight, lobster," he says, popping it in the pot.

Almost immediately, the pot emits a high-pitched wail.

"It's screaming!" Faye says.

"Nope, that's just you." Spike takes out the second lobster. "Ah, Julia, we meet again," he says to it. The lobster's face is about as communicative as his old love's. And the temperature's about right. Chilly. He grins.

"Why Julia? And yes, that damn thing is screaming, Spike. Don't try to make me think I'm crazy."

Spike glances over at her without moving his head. She looks upset; not in the cute-fun-angry way, but in the something-is-suffering-on-my-account way, and he feels bad. So he explains, "That's the sound of steam coming out of the lobster's shell. Lobsters don't have vocal cords. As for why this is Julia, well, I named the other one Vicious, because that fucker just wouldn't die." He drops the lobster into the pot. "Sorry, Julia, but believe me, it's for the best."

Julia-lobster and Vicious-lobster cuddle up on the bottom of the pot, stoically accepting their fates. Or something. It's lame to compare your dinner to your past, so Spike puts the lid on the pot and turns back to the present.

Which is Faye, who stands with her arms crossed, glaring daggers at him.

"Oh, c'mon." He fans his fingers over her hips, pulls her to him. "I had to talk to a guy who smelled like cabbage to get those lobsters. So forgive me and shut up."

He kisses the part of her hair, nuzzles under her ear. She smells of something different today—not ginseng or mango, but some feathery, tantalizing scent which is uniquely her own. She melts against him.

And then she shoves him away. Hard. He slams against the table, grabs onto its edge for balance. "What the hell was that for?"

"Are you fucking stoned? Is that the reason you're acting so doo-lally?"

"Doo-lally? Is that even a word?" Spike rubs his back. "I promise I'm not stoned. And I didn't get in any fights—no major ones, anyway—and I came back without a scratch on me. _With_ two expensive lobsters, whose purchase is a minor crime on Ganymede."

"God. I was worried, you ass." She shakes her head. "Look, if you don't want me fucking off without a word, don't you do it either. That's fair, right?"

He looks down at his boots. Same old boots. Same old chipped and stained Bebop floor. He does this to convince himself that the universe is still the same, because for once, Faye is right. "All right," he says.

And just like that, she's in his arms again, pressing her cheek against his chest. Totally appeased. Spike wraps his arms around her. Her innocence is disarming. And alarming. If he ever lies to her, she'll believe him absolutely, and be crushed when the truth comes out. The last thing he wants to do is seriously injure Faye.

He can't say that, though, so he does the next best thing. He tightens his hold on her, marveling at the architectural curve of her ribcage to her tiny waist to her full hips. She raises her head, her eyes already gone witchy with desire.

The kiss is slow and deep. Faye presses his back against the table, placing her full, soft weight against him; she tips him back so she can kiss him fully, and he allows it. Not just allows. Revels in it. Because this is his woman right now, and he is cooking her dinner.


	25. Diamond Dust

"Diamond Dust" A/N: In all probability, this is going to be a long chapter. I have a bit of ground to cover. Catch the JTHM reference!

I've edited this, and I'm still not happy with it. Oh well. This will just have to join "Gun Street Girl" in the file of "give-up" chapters.

KARMA: Diamond Dust

Spike's eyes almost look the same color by candlelight.

After arranging the lobsters on a platter, Spike had her find candles, the folding table, a tablecloth, as he prepared the side dishes. Then they carried the food up to the bridge and set the table to overlook Jupiter and its orbiting moons.

"So which one's Ganymede?" she asks.

"Hell if I know," Spike says, mouth full of lobster. "God, this is good."

It's difficult to have a romantic dinner with no champagne, sitting across from some moss-haired lunkhead who rips shells apart with his hands and talks with his mouth full. But there's nowhere else she'd rather be. The line of his nose, the shape of his eyes and the timbre of his voice—they belong to her now, in some provisional way. That long neck, those broad shoulders; she's touched them, felt their warmth, licked his salt off his skin. These are boons she never thought would be granted.

Spike notices her watching him and deliberately slows his chewing, the motions of his hands, until finally he puts down the silverware and gazes at her.

It's difficult to believe the miracle. Spike. Insane, hardheaded Spike who finally acts as though this life is one he wants to lead, not just one he wants to visit for a short time. Does she have anything to do with that? She doesn't know.

What is this to him? Sport? Some kind of twisted gratitude, offered a day late and a buck short? He hasn't said he loves her, but then, she hasn't said it to him either.

X

"You got all serious. What's up?"

She shakes her head, violet strands washing over the bridge of her nose. She still hasn't put on her headband. What's that about, anyway? She hasn't worn it since she got shot.

Maybe her bullet wound is bothering her. Maybe she's still brooding over the dash he pulled. If he'd known it would bother her this badly, he would have taken his communicator, even at the risk of spoiling the surprise.

He reaches over the table and pushes her hair out of her eyes. The locks are silky and warm on the backs of his fingers. "Hey."

She smiles and nuzzles his palm. "Your hands are all rough," she says. He feels the words more than hears them, as quietly as she speaks.

"Yeah, holding nothing but gunstocks for two damn decades," he says. What would his life been like if he'd never lifted a gun? Stop it. He lifted guns. He killed people, got injured every-which-way from Sunday, lost his mind, lost his heart, and found them again. Not many people as lucky as he is, to know exactly life's breadth and depth.

And he's not holding a gunstock now. Just Faye. Who is a pistol, but not destructive in and of herself.

He takes his hand away and tears off another morsel of lobster. He offers it to her silently. The tines of the fork and the buttery meat glow in the soft light, candle and star.

She opens her lips and daintily accepts what he gives her. The motion of her tongue and teeth communicates through the metal of the utensil.

He's jealous of the fork.

The remainder of the Ganymede rock lobster, delicacy or no delicacy, doesn't interest him as much as her mouth. So long as he remembers not to leave it in the fridge this time, he thinks it's safe to do what he does, which is get out of his seat and take the two quick strides necessary to bring Faye within reach.

He bends over her chair, kissing her, tasting the rich, buttery lobster on her tongue. She winds her arms around his neck, burying her fingers in his hair. Yanking, like always. When he finally beds her, he'll probably wake up with blood on his back. Let her bring it on.

He smiles and laughs a little against her mouth.

She pulls away. Her eyes are wary; she must think he's mocking her. "What is it this time?"

Words. She always wants words. He strokes her neck, the fine-grained skin smooth as water, and runs his thumb over her lower lip. She laps at it helplessly as it passes, and the blood leaves his head.

"I—" He shakes his head, closes his eyes. Whatever. He'll just show her.

Show her that she brings him back from the dead on a daily basis. Show her that he understands she's his match in cards, in space dogfights, in verbal fireworks that are half-display and half-war. Show her that as much as she needs to believe in him, he needs to believe in her even more. Without someone to guard, someone to care about, Spike is less than nothing, a dead man walking.

Somewhere inside him Julia's bright star still dazzles and flares, but the present is what matters—making choices to maximize happiness in the future, Faye said, and he agrees. Faye is his happiness in this world, a world without a past or future to struggle against.

So he kisses her as though trying to drink her or perhaps be swallowed by her. He wants to crawl inside her skin, invade her, see himself the way she sees him. It's a physical pain, an ache in his stomach, through the long skeletal muscles of his frame. His hand slips from her neck to her breast. Soft and round and warm, with a silky little hard welcome for his palm. He pulls her nipple and takes her shaky sigh into his mouth.

Her fingers flex on his shoulders. Strong fingers for such a slender woman. His hands on her seem to give her some kind of permission, because they don't stay there long.

X

This is different. This is serious, for keeps. The final hand.

Faye stands to press herself against Spike. He's hard all over, hard against her, muscle and bone and blood. She feels the little knots of his vertebrae at the back of his neck, the corrugation of his ribs under sliding muscle.

His mouth is hard on hers, too, but she doesn't mind. He's telling her things. Need. Desire that must be sated now. Urgency. But mostly need, need without fulfilment, possibly without end.

His hand is under her tank top now, under her bra, and hers are fiddling with the buttons of his shirt, needing the damn thing off already, because it's blocking her from what she wants.

To hell with it. He can buy a new one. She tears it and buttons bounce crazily all over the bridge. Fortunately, his tie is loose; one hard yank on the knot and it's history.

She breaks away from his mouth. He makes a questioning sound which turns abruptly into a hiss when her teeth close around his nipple. She swirls her tongue around it slowly and he kicks his head back, his hands stroking her head, her shoulders. She attends to the other, scratches at the first, wet from her mouth. His body is so beautiful. Amazing wondrous sweet machine. But it's nothing compared to Spike himself, his sweetness and charm and smartassedness and vulnerability all hers now. She's dizzy with power, and seeks more.

She sinks to her knees, kissing down the center of his body with a light touch, just her lips and the wash of her breath as she gasps at the thought of what she's about to do.

Spike groans her name, voice full of anticipation and lust, and his expression—what is that expression? Awed? Grateful? Dumbstruck is probably the closest description, but Faye doesn't care as she undoes his pants.

The Bebop's engines scream and the ship bucks. He loses his footing as she pitches against him, rolls to shield her as the table collapses. Silverware and plates rain on his back, break against the floor with crystalline chimes.

The ship stills. Silence: unusual silence. No growl of the engine. She still feels his excitement, and her own, but this is secondary to whatever immortal mechanical cock-up Jet has committed this time.

"What the fuck?" Spike's voice is strained. A few drops of sweat stand out on his temples.

"Jet," Faye groans.

"That's not a name I want to hear you say like that," Spike says. He flashes a grin and stands, does up his pants. Faye sighs as blue fabric covers his striped boxers and strutted manhood. "Dammit. He's gonna come yelling any minute for my help." He looks around, confused, then says, "Oh, great, you really did tear my shirt off."

"Spike! Where the hell are you? What have you done to my ship?" Jet's voice echoes up the hatch from the living room.

"Hang on," Spike calls back. He throws the shirt over his shoulders.

"Don't mess around with things you don't know shit about, you hear me? If this damage costs more than fifteen thousand, it's coming out of your take, buddy!"

"I didn't do anything to the motherfucking ship."

Faye raises herself up on her hands, still kneeling on the floor. His eyes skip from hers to her mouth down to the cleavage of her breasts.

"God damn it." He bends down for a quick kiss. "Just... hold that thought. I mean, _really."_

She grins as he pulls back. "I don't know. It's not every day a man buys me a rock lobster..."

He points a warning finger at her and pulls himself down the hatch.

X

"So if I didn't do it..." Jet stares at the smoking engine, "...and if you didn't do it, then who did it?"

The air reeks of hot metal and burned oil. The gears twitch and squeal.

"My bet's Ed." Spike lights a cigarette. He needs one. He's about to jump out of his skin from frustration.

Jet doesn't even favor that with a response. "Tell me again what the hell you were doing?"

"I was eating," Spike says. "Faye's my alibi if you wanna check with her."

"Uh-huh. Eating. With Faye. Shirtless. On the bridge."

Spike shrugs. Let Jet put together what he will. Right now the important thing is getting this little mystery cleared up before Faye becomes engrossed in the vid or painting her toenails or something.

"Whatever, Spike-o. Let's see what the hell went wrong here. Gimme a three-eight."

Spike hands over the wrench, contemplating, as the tool passes from his hand into Jet's, how many times this little drama has played out: the two of them in the engine room of the Bebop, trying to bring the dead back to life.

At some point, he and Jet will have to talk about this thing with Faye, and it's not going to be an easy conversation considering how Jet feels about her. Spike sighs. His life has devolved into nothing more than a series of difficult conversations. It's what he gets for being so damn social, he supposes.

"What the hell?" Jet pries off a metal cover and stares. His eyebrows rise.

"What is it?" Spike can't make heads or tails of the Bebop's guts.

"There's some kind of sand in the works." Jet rubs it with the tip of a finger and yelps. "Holy shit! This is diamond dust."

His blood spatters on the floor. "How hard you rub that thing, Jet?" Spike asks. "You know, they say when you've drawn blood, it's time to call it a night."

Jet glares at him. Obviously now is not the time for jokes. "Don't be a moron. Diamonds are the hardest things in the universe. Diamond dust is dangerous; cuts like hell. Someone threw a shit-ton of it into the Bebop's engine, and I'm betting it's our bountyhead." Jet kicks the wall. "Who we really need to catch now if we wanna repair this damn heap, 'cause the engine's a dead duck."

"So she's nearby." Spike crushes the cigarette under the sole of his boot. "That's good. We can just pick her up and be on our way."

"Don't take her lightly, Spike. Spike! Are you listening to me?"

Spike waves acknowledgment as he walks off.


	26. K82.B

A/N: 2016 Me here: My science in this section is wrong like a wrong thing that is wrong. I'm not gonna fix it bc this text editor is awful on my iPhone, but I know it's wrong. Carry on.

The Redtail and the Swordfish fly from the hangar.

Jet plucks a button off the console. Fake iridescent mother-of-pearl. A yellow thread dangles from one of its four holes.

A shirt button. Spike's. Jet closes it in his fist.

Those two. He's sent them out in starships and spacesuits with nothing more than their wits and a few lousy guns against a bounty who feels nothing about abrading the skin off her enemies with diamond dust. If there really is an infant something between the two of them, the stakes are higher. It's not about money; but then, it never has been. It's about winning, about survival, about identity. They are bounty hunters. If they aren't hunting, they aren't anything.

Except those two have apparently given each other a new role. Jet envies them. It's been a long time since anyone looked to him that way. And the one who did, rejected it. Alisa. Faye reminds him of her in appearance, though not in behavior. The button shines on his palm.

He relies on them more than they rely on him. Stray cats lapping milk, allowing him to scratch them behind their ears as a courtesy. It's always been that way. Now's not the time to become depressed about that fact. There's work to do. Jet slips the button into a vest pocket and opens the comm channel.

X

"Where are you?" Faye sings. "Where are you, my two hundred million woolong bountyhead?"

"Don't get careless," Spike says.

His scanners don't show a damn thing. No heat sources. But that doesn't mean much; space suits are made to keep body heat in, so someone in a space suit won't show on infrared. He tightens his grip on the steering, the muscles in his arms twitching. He grins fiercely. In spite of his caution to Faye, he's every bit as eager as she is to get this thing done.

And if that nut does anything to the Swordfish, there will be trouble.

X

"Incoming!"

Faye jerks at Jet's voice over the comm. Her scanners are blank. "Where? What? I don't see anything."

"Just move!"

"Wait a minute—!" The Redtail jolts and shakes.

"Faye, get out of there!" Spike's voice is an agonized scream.

The Redtail. Her ship. She's been hit.

Time slows. _Mom! Mom! I made the cheerleading squad, Mom!_

_Call me after school so we can study, all right, Faye?_

_Don't forget your piano lesson._

Shattered glass refracts the moon.

_You have GOT to be kidding me!_

_I seem to be very generous._

_You were afraid of losing them._

_Don't get shot again. It's not good._

_Oh God, this will kill him._

Jupiter burns itself on her retinas, the hurricane like a bloody wound on its face. Huge, spinning gas giant. As a child, she used to ponder what would happen if she flew by it and threw just. One. Match. Down into that enormous sleeping sun.

She finds out as the Redtail explodes around her.

X

"Faye!"

Spike can't separate his shout from Jet's. The Redtail a coal of fire, red and yellow and orange.

A glass bulb separates from the ball of flame.

"Get her, Spike!"

Spike leans over the controls and guns the engine. A blue streak of energy pops the fragile cockpit like a soap bubble, glass sprays, Faye's red space-suited body arcs against the backdrop of Jupiter. He logs this one-two-three in the three seconds it takes to reach her.

She's adrift, limp; he can't tell if she's conscious or unconscious, dead or alive. He opens the Swordfish's cockpit. Air rushes out, shoves her away, but he snatches one ankle and draws her in.

The cockpit clicks shut. Lucky thing they were both already in space suits, else they would have died of decompression. He opens both their helmets and presses his fingers against her neck.

She's alive.

He gasps for air. He didn't know he'd been holding his breath.

"Spike!"

No time. Spike twists the controls wildly and the Swordfish leaps under his command. McAfee's shot misses.

"Where's she firing from, Jet?" he asks.

"I don't fucking know, all right?" Jet sounds panicked. "These triangulations don't make any goddamned sense."

Jupiter spins as Spike sends the Swordfish into spastic gyrations. He can't allow even one hit, going from what happened to the Redtail.

"Spike, it's the autobots!"

Spike doesn't need anymore than that. He reconfigures his scanners. His screen blooms with red and green triangles, all the information he'd previously been seining out: asteroids, space junk, and the autobots.

"What are the autobots packing, then? Nuclear warheads?" he asks.

"High-yield lasers. Meant to zap asteroids or anything else that could interfere with them. Got more bad news for you, Spike—if you take out even one of 'em, we lose the bounty."

"Terrific," Spike says. He grits his teeth. "So what am I supposed to do, Jet?"

"Hold on, I'm working on it."

"Yeah, well, while you're working on it, I'm getting lit up." It's easier to evade now that he has the autobots' positions, but without knowing which one McAfee is in, all he's doing is buying time and wasting fuel.

Faye moans. "My head. Ugh. Why's everything spinning?"

"Because we're in a serious dogfight," Spike says. He keeps his attention on what he's doing. Jupiter falls away, replaced by the star-spattered backdrop of deep space. The Swordfish loops and spins over blue tracers.

"I thought I was dying. Why am I in the Swordfish? What happened to my ship?"

"Gone."

Faye doesn't say anything, but he senses her mourning.

"I've got it! She's in K82.B. That's the boss autobot that sends all the others their orders. It's the only place she could be hacking from."

Spike skims the information on his screen. "There's no dock."

"No dock and no gravity, either. You'll have to go in the hard way."

"How am I supposed to get there without getting blown to shit, huh?"

Faye closes her helmet. "Let me out of this thing."

"No deal," he says.

"It's the only way. Get beneath that boss autobot. I'll jump out, use my momentum to get to it while you draw the others' fire."

"Faye." He wishes he could look at her. One hard glare would be enough to convince her of the stupidity of this plan. But he has to keep his eyes on navigation if he wants to make it out of this mess.

"I hate to say it, Spike, but she's right. You can't shoot that boss autobot, I can't hack into it, and the Swordfish is the only ship we can use. They aren't firing at the Bebop, which means they're only targeting one thing at a time."

Overlapping Jet, Faye says, "I'm going to do this."

Spike looks at her for a split second. Her face behind the helmet is blue-tinged by tracer fire. Her lips are set, eyes serious. There's no greed, no deathwish in her expression. Just determination.

Softly, she says, "She blew up my ship. I want to be the one to take her down."

He nods then, once, sharp. "Just don't screw up."


	27. Suited Up In Blue

KARMA: Suited Up In Blue

Spacewalking is what dying must feel like—becoming weightless, floating away in silence. But she is alive: she hears her breathing, the blood beating in her ears.

Head full of bees. Adrenaline. The Redtail, space waste. Its fragments sparkle in the distance; she sees it when she turns her head. She used to mock Spike for his attachment to the Swordfish, but now she understands. The Redtail was her only possession; at times, it was her only home. Gone for good. She clenches her teeth.

In space, all motion is one way. She jumped out of the Swordfish and now she arrows towards K82.B.

How can she go from making out with Spike to near-death to spacewalking in the span of thirty minutes? She can't wrap her head around it; it's a complete mindfrag.

It doesn't matter. She wants this bounty.

She keys the electromagnets on the soles of her boots, flips so she stands on the metal hull of the autobot. The magnets are nice, but they're no replacement for gravity. Only her feet are anchored; everything else remains weightless. Her body sways like a water reed.

"Okay, I made it," she says.

"Don't fight unless you have to, Faye." Spike's voice, hard-edged. "Try to disable the computer first."

She turns the comm channel off. She doesn't want to hear it. Hacking's not a go; she knows jack-all about computers. Besides, she wants payback. She takes her gun out of its holster and thumbs the safety off.

Finding the entrance is easy enough; she follows the arrows painted on the autobot's hull. The autobot itself is shaped like a funnel, its open vaccuum section narrowing to the business end, where the debris gets seined out from the valuable material. There doesn't look to be much room inside the bot itself. A close-quarters fight might take away McAfee's edge; there'll be plenty of bulkheads to pound the woman against.

Faye hesitates before she opens the maintenance hatch. Is she ready to do this? She's already almost died twice in the past two weeks, and she doesn't know how many lives she was born with.

She remembers Jet's voice tolling off the many ways in which the previous bounty hunters bought it. _Pitched into a planet's gravity well, minced in a separator unit, broken helmet, blood loss due to some weird abrasion, pummelled to death in an asteroid field, shot..._

Diamond dust explains the weird abrasion, at least. She'll have to watch out for that. Faye twists open the hatch one-handed and slips inside the autobot.

X

She's going in.

Spike evades lasers, trying to figure out a way to get into the autobot without getting the Swordfish blown to hell and gone. Faye can handle herself, and she's a good shot, but he doesn't like the fact that he can't back her up.

If she dies in there because he's unwilling to sacrifice the monoship, could he live with himself?

Another woman dead. Faye's body when she was adrift, a comma shape in space, looked too much like Katerina's. The similarities spook him.

He opens a channel to the Bebop. "Jet," he says, "I'm going in too."

"Forget it. Even if you put the Swordfish on autopilot..."

Spike programs a course back to the Bebop, using algorithms based on the positions of the autobots and their projected lines of fire. He hopes it's enough to get her back to the Bebop in one piece.

"Be prepared to open the hangar for the Swordfish," he says.

"Don't be rash!"

"She's a good ship," he says. "She can take care of herself."

He enters the course and closes his helmet.

X

The inside of the autobot is lit only by red emergency lights. The narrow passageway is more like a tunnel: a claustrophobe's nightmare. Faye flattens herself as much as possible against the bulkhead, Glock at the ready.

She can't hear a damned thing. She never knew she relied so much on her hearing. Her breath whistles annoyingly in her ears.

This is important. That bitch blew up her ship, and right now, she's trying to kill Spike. Faye moves awkwardly down the narrow passage. Walking on magnets is like walking through glue or some kind of viscous syrup; she has to wrest each foot free. Her hips and knees ache with the strain. She imagines she leaves a trail of sticky boot prints behind her.

The passage ends in another hatch like the one outside. That must be the control room. That's where she'll find McAfee. Faye closes her fingers around the handle of the hatch and takes a deep breath. She's shaking. Doesn't matter. Payback time.

X

Spike scrambles through the outer hatch and drops into the passage just as Faye opens the hatch at the end.

She immediately flattens herself against the bulkhead, so he does too. It turns out to be the right move. A muzzle flashes in the red-tinted gloom. Silent gunshot. The bullet misses them both, but they sway, anchored to metal by the magnets in their boots, all balance otherwise lost.

Spike keys his magnets off and propels himself down the hall, covering ground as fast as he can. Faye whips weightlessly into the control room, using the edge of the hatch as a pivot point.

McAfee has her back to the control console. She's suited up in blue and ready to play, gun in hand. Spike raises the Jericho, but there's no target. He can't fire at McAfee's helmet, because that would kill her. He can't shoot out the console, because that would cost them the bounty. He can't go for the good wound, because Faye's in the way. And he can't go in to help, because this is personal. So he stays put and covers Faye.

Faye punches the woman in the stomach. Fist to flesh, strangely silent in the airless atmosphere. Maybe she says something, maybe she doesn't; he doesn't have the comm channel open, so whole the fight looks strange, like puppet theater or a video on mute.

McAfee tries to break Faye's helmet with the butt of her gun. Faye blocks. Spike grins.

That's right. His girl can take care of herself.

X

The other woman's face behind the clear helmet of her suit contorts with rage. Her mouth moves.

"Sorry, doll, can't hear a word," Faye says. She holds McAfee's wrist in one hand, punches her again with the other. "Nice of you to stand against the console." She knees her in the gut, slamming the bounty's back against it. "Makes it so much easier to kick your ass."

McAfee's eyes narrow and she smiles. Faye doesn't know what that means until she feels a sudden pain in her side. McAfee's knee. Her bullet wound. She sucks in breath and finds she can't release it.

Now she can read the bounty's lips perfectly. "I can say the same for you."

Faye drops to one knee, holding her flank. Is it bleeding again? She can't tell. Pull it together, Faye. She slams her teeth on her tongue until she tastes blood and the pain overwhelms the agony of the reopened wound.

Blood bursts from McAfee's shoulder, an aerosol spray of tiny red droplets. She claps a hand on the wound and glares at something Faye can't see.

"Stay the hell out of this, Spike," Faye says, but she knows he can't hear her. McAfee brings her gun up, either aiming at Spike or trying to break her helmet again, and Faye uncoils, keying her magnetic boots on so she can brace herself against the floor. She buries her knuckles in the bounty's armpit.

X

Spike lowers the Jericho. He's impressed. He didn't know Faye knew how to do that. The armpit is a key pressure point of the body; hit it just right, and it causes all kinds of hell to the recipient of the blow—broken ribs, lost breath, nausea, the works.

And apparently McAfee feels it all, because Faye is able to put her in an arm lock and bash her head against the console. Once. Twice. Again. This keeps up, she's going to break the woman's helmet.

He turns the comm channel on. "We don't get the reward if she's dead, Faye."

Faye glares over her shoulder, wraps her arm around McAfee's neck. "Who asked you?"

Spike opens his hands. "I'm just saying."

McAfee's body goes limp. After a long moment, Faye relaxes.

And then McAfee brings up her pistol and cracks Faye across the helmet. Faye flinches back in time; the butt glances off.

Spike jumps to the ceiling, keys his magnets on so he stands head-down. Weird vertigo. Through the red mist of McAfee's blood, the two women struggle upside-down.

McAfee flings Faye into a bulkhead. She grunts, lost wind and pain. Spike turns the magnets off and shoves himself off the ceiling, flips in midair to kick McAfee, but she grabs his foot, slams him to the floor. The impact jolts pain all through his back.

Spike growls.

McAfee runs. Faye pulls him to his feet.

"She's trying to make it out," he says. "She knows we aren't used to fighting in deep space."

"So we don't let her." Her eyes are feral with rage. "Let's go."


	28. Takedown

KARMA: Takedown

Faye grabs McAfee's ankle just before the diamond thief slips out of the open hatch into deep space.

"Watch—" Spike never completes his warning. McAfee's other foot lashes out and connects. Faye collides with Spike, who grabs her instinctively. He slams against the bulkhead behind him. Ow, shit. But Faye distracts him from the fresh pain in his bruised back. She holds her waist, her face twisted.

"What's wrong?"

"Like she knows I'm shot, just keeps hitting the same spot over and over," Faye gasps. "Ow."

Spike puts her against the bulkhead and floats past her. "Suck it up. She's getting away."

"Thanks for your concern," Faye snaps. The pain is gone from her voice, as he expected. Anger is the best restorative for Faye Valentine.

"Plenty of time for that later," he says. He grabs the edge of the hatch, and glances back at her. "You coming or not?"

Without waiting for her answer, he propels himself out into nothing.

And finds himself face to face with McAfee.

Her helmet reflects his, the autobot, Jupiter, all distorted and swirled together, but behind its glass, he gets his first good look at her. Her long, narrow eyes are black, like the shell of a beetle or an oil puddle, communicating nothing, reflecting everything. Spike sees himself in them, both his physical body and who he used to be.

For a minute, he pities her. Living alone, going from bot to bot, emptying bins, fencing the dust or using it as a weapon, but alone, silent, spinning, arms and legs splayed like a starfish in the middle of a vast emptiness. It's familiar and it's sad.

But then she shoves him, rocketing him back against the metal of the autobot, and Spike's moment of sensitivity ends. He jumps off the metal and closes with her, both of them tumbling end-over-end as he tries to wrap his hands around her neck. If he can kayoe her, this will all be over.

Then Faye is there, launching herself into the fight with the passion of a lioness. Her momentum knocks them away from the autobot.

"Goddammit, Faye—" If Jet can't reach them in the Hammerhead, then Faye has just killed all three of them. Without something metal nearby to lock their magnetic soles onto, they will continue to drift on the same trajectory into space until the universe decides to give up the ghost.

But McAfee raises her modded gun and shoots. A shining wire with a magnet at the end surges from the barrel and attaches itself to the autobot's hull. Spike grabs her leg, feels Faye's arms encircle his waist, and their momentum is checked with a jerk. The line holds.

Faye's nails prick his skin through the thin fabric of his suit as she climbs up his body. "She's still mine," she says.

Spike shrugs as much as he can while hanging on for dear life. "Go for it."

McAfee kicks at them both with her free leg. They spiral on their frail tether. Spike has a sudden image of Faye flung off by centripetal force, so he puts his arm around her leg, anchoring her as she punches McAfee.

McAfee can't let go of the gun now. Every punch is an opportunity for her to go drifting off into the void. With Spike on one leg, she has only one arm and the opposing leg to work with. Still, Faye's punches aren't enough to put her down, and she plunges one hand into a pocket of her suit.

Diamond dust. If McAfee rubs it onto Faye, her suit will give, the pressure inside expanding outwards through the microtears, and Faye will die.

Shit. Spike lets go, taking the chance that one of the bountyhead's kicks will connect and push him away.

"Don't let her touch you!" He holds McAfee's shin in one hand, slams the edge of the other as hard as he can on the back of her knee. Tendons sheer from bone. Well, that must hurt like a bitch. In space, no one can hear you scream, but the woman's head kicks up and back, her back bows in agony.

Her fist opens, releasing glittering dust. It sparkles in a cloud around her blue glove. The sight mesmerizes him: the cloud, black space, the blue palm, and beyond it, the remnants of the Redtail twinkling in the reflected light of Jupiter.

McAfee's fingers, clenched around the butt of her gun, go limp. The gun floats a bare millimeter from her palm. Faye snatches it, her other arm around McAfee's neck in a sleeper hold.

"She's—" Faye is out of breath. "I think she's out."

"Well, she wasn't out the last time, so my advice is to keep squeezing," Spike says grimly. He pulls himself up McAfee's body and carefully turns her pockets inside out, releasing more diamond dust.

The bountyhead's body is limp as a rag. Faye gingerly takes her arm away from her neck, but she shows no signs of reviving. She's out, kayoed. Faye whoops in triumph, a valkyrie cry that rings in his ears.

The Swordfish. He opens a channel to the Bebop. "Jet. My ship?"

"She made it. The autobots stopped firing when you two got McAfee outside." Jet's gruff voice is warm with relief. "I'm coming to pick you up."

Spike exhales. Something unknots in his stomach. He calls the Swordfish II a hunk of junk and a piece of scrap, but that ship is part of him—probably the best part, at that.

Faye turns her head and smiles at him. Her eyes shine: adrenaline, relief and exultation, and something else, something indefinable that's only for him.

Spike smiles back.


	29. Float On

"Float On" A/N: The title is from the Modest Mouse song "Float On," which I consider the "roll credits" song for this fic.

KARMA: Float On

Fun fact about the Hammerhead's cockpit: it's far too small for four people.

Faye's breasts press against Jet's upper back. Spike's pointy knee digs into his ribs. And across his lap is McAfee, still unconscious, her hands shackled behind her back. She bleeds all over his thighs, fills the cockpit with the heavy copper odor of her blood. Jet snarls as he flies the old fishing scow back to the Bebop.

"Here's the plan," he says, making his voice as businesslike as possible. "The Bebop's got nothing happening under the hood, and she won't until we drop off this wench. So I'm gonna kick you two off my nice clean ship in the Bebop's hangar, tow her to Mars to cash McAfee in, and then to the shop."

"You're seriously gonna keep her in here?" Faye asks. She raps her knuckles on McAfee's head. "She's dangerous, you know."

"Yeah, I know. That's why I wanna keep an eye on her. Think I trust you two to keep her under lock and key? Hell, I'd rather have you babysit a nuclear warhead. Least then I'd die in the explosion and wouldn't have to live with how bad I fucked up."

And that, Jet thinks, puffing out an inaudible sigh, is the hard part over. He'll be on the Hammerhead while Spike and Faye do whatever the hell it is they're going to do. He won't have to see it or hear it until it's a done deal and there's not shit he can do about it. That'll be the easiest way of handling the situation.

He glances sidelong at Spike and finds the kid is staring at him. Not just staring. Really looking. Spike gets it, in one of those rare, brief flashes of inhuman intuition he sometimes displays. Jet looks out at the starfield, the inert hulk of the Bebop a dim black blot.

X

Spike figures that's the conversation over and done with. He and Jet have settled thornier problems with less discussion. He's relieved. He puts his hands behind his head and closes his eyes, thinking about everything that's happened over the past two weeks.

Faye shot. He spilled his guts. She tried to leave; he stopped her. He cooked her some food and then they went and bagged a big bounty. And now what?

He opens one eye—his left—just enough to see Faye through the spiky screen of his lashes. She's draped over Jet's shoulders; she tries to straighten up and bangs her head on the Hammerhead's ceiling. Glares up at it: that ceiling is now her mortal enemy, and it better not forget it.

Spike smiles inwardly. No cold, distant grace there; Faye's damn near as clumsy as he is when he's not paying attention, which is most the time.

She's like him in a lot of ways. She does impetuous things and hurts herself and everyone around her, though none of the pain she doles out is worse than a bump on the head, which is where they differ big time. But, he thinks, closing his eye fully, that's what so good about it: every day, she'll remind him there are people in the world stupid enough to give a damn. She'll keep him from drifting back to that numb land inside his head. The "I don't give a fuck what happens here because I don't give a flying fuck about anything anymore"ness that used to define his life. Or unlife, which is what it was.

And in return, he'll just be grateful. Be there. Try to pay her back as much as he can, which won't be even a fraction of what he owes her.

So yeah. They'll float on okay. Spike's lips curve with satisfaction.

X

The Hammerhead arcs away. Spike and Faye stand on the Bebop's hull and watch Jet fire yellow achor lines. Magnetic grappling hooks bite into the Bebop, latching onto scarred and battered plates. The yellow and gray Hammerhead, every bit as scarred and battered as her mother ship, pulls until the lines yank taut, and the Bebop begins to move.

Theoretically, anyway. There are no reference points in space to judge the Bebop's movement against, and of course, they can't hear the Hammerhead's straining engines.

Spike touches Faye then, a light graze of his fingertips on her upper arm. She looks up at him, her eyes wide behind the violet-tinted glass of her helmet and the deeper violet strands of her hair.

"Let's go in," he says.

X

The red space suit emphasizes the clean lines of Spike's lanky body. When he takes off his helmet and looks down at her, the expression in his eyes sends a spasm of pain through her body that momentarily confuses her.

White jolt. She shakes her head, tries to shake it off, but her hands are already shaking with adrenaline as her heart beats faster.

He approaches, all leonine threat and power. Hers. The lion come to heel at last.

She stands still, half-afraid—weird thought—that if she moves wrong, he'll turn on her, savage her like a wild animal. She sees him then like a double-exposed photograph. This is her Spike, but layered on him is Spike the killer, Julia's Spike, the attack dog who ran from bondage through drugs and sex and violence and finally for keeps.

All of the pain of his life slams down on her, becomes real, and she panics: what if she's not enough? What if he finds he has to run again? Her hard breathing stirs the long bangs in her eyes, sends them fluttering against her nose.

He pushes them back with his fingers. "You know, you can still wear the headband, Faye," he says. "It won't change anything."

"It doesn't go," she says. Her voice has gone thready on her; she can't seem to get any volume behind the words.

"We're rich now." Spike's lips quirk into a half-smile. "At least until you blow it all in a casino."

"You're just begging me to shut you up, aren't you?" She glares and tips her chin up, which has the added benefit of pressing her cheek into his hard palm.

"Yeah, matter of fact, I am."

Faye relaxes. The day may come when Spike leaves her—or she leaves him. Loss has always been a fact of her existence. That probably won't change. But right now, he holds her in both hands, looks at her with both eyes, and she knows she has the full attention of both men, both halves of him. Right now, everything is right.

X

Spike's room. Faye remembers the scent. Woodchips and salt, cigarette smoke.

It's impossible to tear off his space suit the way she had his shirt, so she stops kissing him long enough for him to pull down the zipper.

He does it slowly, making a show of it for her, that bastard. The scarlet fabric parts, exposing his well-developed chest and flat abs, as well as the seams and scars earned from a lifetime of treating his body like a useful but replaceable tool. She steps in to him, runs her hands over those marks, feels their toughness against the smoothness of his skin. His skin warms under her palms, the muscles tighten under her fingers. In her past life, she knew Braille: she wonders what she can read now from the raised scars on his pale skin.

"Unzip me," she says.

He stares at her with his chin down and eyes up, the Spike Special. He's nervous. The realization makes her head buzz.

"Can you do this?" He trails his fingers over her bandaged waist. "It might hurt."

She bites her lip. The wound aches, yes, but it's nothing compared to the pain in her belly, the thrum all through her limbs. "I don't care if it does."

He stands very close to her. She can taste his breath. It reminds her too much of how his mouth tastes. "What, are you scared of me?" she taunts him.

"As if," he says, and jams her zipper.

She rolls her eyes and slips the suit off her shoulders.

X

He's seen Faye's shoulders at least a thousand times. That gold thing she used to wear showed almost all of her body—to him and to whoever else cared to look. But it's different now. The suit seems to expose more of her body than it conceals, and now, as she shucks it like a shell, she enters into a second degree of nakedness.

He's shaking. He can't remember the last time that happened. His stomach is tight; an ache runs all through him, goading him, confusing him. Touching her eases the pain, so he does.

He kisses the points of her collarbones, the hollow of her throat. She throws her head back and closes her eyes. He moves to her throat, traces its arc with his tongue. Her skin is soft and flawless, alabaster pale in spite of all her sunbathing. He gathers her against him and she twists in his arms like a cat, her fingernails tearing lines of fire across his ribs.

He grins and gently bites her beneath the point of her jaw. He knew she would do that.

X

Impossible, unbelievable, Spike's mouth on her breasts, his hands on her back, her hips, her thighs. He uses teeth and nails and she gasps and trembles, almost falls. Her knees don't seem to want to work anymore.

He dizzily spins her towards the bed and they fall in a clumsy tangle of long limbs. He accidentally jabs her with one astoundingly pointy elbow and she's amazed by how little she cares. His weight on her is a step in the right direction; the whole length of his work-hardened body presses on her. She arches her back, increasing the pressure between them, and tells him what she wants.

X

"Just like that and never ever stop kissing me," she says.

He obeys, kissing her deeply, stealing her breath and taking it into his own lungs. She wraps her legs around his waist and demands more; his back is a net of scratches. When he enters her, it's like slipping between warm covers at the end of a long, long day.

The mindspinning fluid heat of her! He wants to pass out and howl and run all at the same time. Instead he sets up a rhythm she easily matches, and then increases, disciplining him to the new pace with her hips and thighs and heels.

He raises himself on his hands to give himself a view. Faye spread out beneath him, eyes closed, red mouth an O of pleasure as she pants and moans and cries out because of him, for him. Her extravagantly voluptuous body, long lean waist, generous breasts marked with his rough kisses.

He puts his hands under her knees and tips her legs up and back, opening her. She tightens around him. Her green eyes fly open and lock with his, hazy, pleasure-filled, esctatic and trusting and loving.

That does it. His back arches as every tense muscle in his body leaps and then melts. He cries out, sweat dripping from his nose.

X

He leaps inside her and spends with a harsh cry.

He continues to rock with her, the motion becoming smoother, less frenetic as she slowly realizes he isn't going away. He stays with her, in her, helping her find her own peace.

She gasps his name in a long, unravelling breath, feeling the sweet twinge begin to surge through her thighs and belly, little glittery shocks running like electricity all through her. He kisses her, slow and soft. Murmurs things she can't fully understand, his deep voice a rumbling purr of reassurance. He reaches between their conjoined bodies and finds the hard knot of tangled nerve endings where all the sensations are centered.

Her legs begin to shake. She doesn't understand. There's something she's reaching for, something she has to have. Her muscles tense and her back bows up from the mattress, pressing her against him, for one long moment that lasts forever. And then the wave crests and she makes it, a hard, shuddering physical ululation.

X

Spike reaches over her to ash in the tray beside her head.

"Yes, you did. You headbutted me," he says.

This argument has been going on for some time. "I did not," Faye says.

"Then how the hell do you explain this fat lip I have, huh?"

"I remember exactly what I did, okay, and I did not headbutt you. McAfee must've given you that when she kicked your ass in the autobot."

"You ought to have a warning label. 'Bites, scratches and headbutts.' That was the weirdest thing I've _ever_ seen a woman do when she comes."

"You're asking to get bitten, scratched and headbutted again if you don't cut it out."

"You screamed, too."

"Shut up, Spike."

"Make me."

And it all starts again.

END OF STORY RAMBLE: Well, that does it for this, except for KARMA, Part II, the epilogue. Total stats on the motherfile: 103 pages. Total span of time spent working on it: four months (I started this in summer '05, wrote everything from Karma, Part I through Idiot's Noose in one thirty-hour ficathon, sat on it for a year, and came back to it this summer).


	30. Karma, Part II

KARMA, Part II

Auctions are all the same: stolen goods, lost goods, damaged goods, wholesale goods. I used to be damaged goods, then I became lost goods, and for a second I was stolen goods. Now I'm just good.

The woman at my side stares at everything with the open naivete of a kid, eyes all lit up with her own special brand of greed. Crap, she wants everything now. She'll buy the whole fucking place unless I distract her.

Fortunately, this is easy to do. A hand on the ass, a comment about her wardrobe, and there she goes: greed turns to rage and she clocks me on the chin. No one else would be able to tell how lightly her fist connected. I catch it in my hand. "Too slow."

"I still got you, didn't I?"

"Hell, you wanna hurt me, all you have to do is get me into bed." I grin at her. It's one I had to invent specifically for her: slow, mocking, lopsided. She never forgave me for making fun of her for that headbutt. Which did happen, though she was too lost in her own world to remember it. I take a little more care now.

She grins back at me, feral, predatory, and her voice is slow as warm honey. "You better believe it."

Every time, she marks me as though she's claiming territory. And, thing is, I don't mind. "Wildcat."

"What did you call me?" She about to hit me again when I point off to the side.

"Wildcat. That ship there."

The Wildcat is a monocarrier like the deceased Redtail, but the cockpit is needle shaped and the thrusters flare from the top. Faye inspects it. "Tell me about it, Spike."

"Fast. Maneuverable. Can take a hit without spraying into four billion shards."

She glares. "Nice. The Swordfish couldn't have taken a hit from those lasers either."

Since this is the truth, I don't argue. "It's got good weapons. No pulse cannon, but claw lasers—fire in a spread pattern. Hard to evade."

This makes her smile. "That'll come in handy the next time I have to blow your ass out of the sky."

I smile back, amused. Yeah, I'll no doubt end up dogfighting with her again, Swordfish versus Wildcat. I'm looking forward to it.

X

I sigh as I part with the cost of the Wildcat. Five hundred thousand woolongs. It's a pretty big portion of what I've got left after I started paying off my debt—for real this time. Spike wants me out from under it. Says it's part of my past, and if he can get free of his then blah blah blah blah.

But as the seller hands over the keys and the chip to program its automatic drive, I feel something. This Wildcat is mine, fair and square and legal. I didn't steal it and it wasn't given to me: I earned it.

Kind of like I earned the long-legged curse who climbs all over my new ship, kicking her hull and staring into the engine. He looks perplexed by her innards, but when he catches me looking, he puts on his I-know-this face. I smile and shake my head.

I miss the Redtail, but the fact is, it wasn't mine. It didn't belong to me. So it got blown to bits, and now it's gone. Not coming back. Well, karma's a bitch like that. There's no use crying over it, especially since I now have the Wildcat.

Spike jumps down from the ship and takes a pack of cigarettes from his pocket. Offers me one, his fingers lingering on mine in an unmistakable carress. "You got what you came for. Ready to go?"

So this is my life now. The Bebop. Bounty hunting. Two different kinds of wildcat. No regrets, no peering into the past to find my future.

From now on, I'll only have the things I earn, the things I choose to work for, like the man who slouches alongside me, his breath tickling my ear.


End file.
